LETTER: Deals are totally inadequate

Congratulations to the County Times and Joshua Powling's in-depth coverage of the Scrutiny Committee meeting which considered local resident Paul Kornycky's superb work in identifying the '˜failure' under Cllr Claire Vickers (Horsham district's planning supremo) and her boss, leader Cllr Ray Dawe, to secure adequate infrastructure funding from the two West of Horsham developments (19.5.16, pp16-17).
By The Newsroom
Published 30th May 2016, 08:00 BST
Updated 7th Jun 2018, 21:04 BST

This article contains affiliate links. We may earn a small commission on items purchased through this article, but that does not affect our editorial judgement.

Your lettersYour letters
Your letters

The article highlighted the absurdity of Cllr Brian O’Connell’s (Henfield) assertion that it was not up to councillors to dictate developer’s profit margins in the same way that councillors cannot ‘go down to Sainsbury’s and tell them how much to sell a bag of crisps for’ (p17).

Cllr O’Connell’s assertions about how to negotiate and make contracts will puzzle many. A contract is a legally binding voluntary agreement that is formed when one person makes an offer and the other accepts it. There may be some preliminary discussion before an offer is formally made. Such pre-contractual representations are often termed ‘invitations to treat’.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

It is basic contract law that a person can go to a shop and negotiate a price with the shopkeeper on any item for sale whether it’s a bag of crisps or a £1,000 computer as prices on products are simply ‘invitations to treat’, i.e. an expression of willingness to negotiate.

A person making an ‘invitation to treat’ does not intend to be bound as soon as it is accepted by the person to whom the statement is addressed and it is for the shopkeeper to accept or reject a price offered by the customer. This is elementary contract law taught to GCSE Law students.

It is no different with developers. It most definitely is for the council to negotiate with developers to get the best community returns – and that often does mean eating into developers’ profit margins. Developers know that comes with the territory and so surely does Cllr Brian O’Connell.

Our council used to negotiate hard and very successfully with big developers and corporations.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

This approach secured developer funds and commitment as part of planning agreements to such projects as the re-development of the town centre and a new school site for Tanbridge House School under the visionary leadership of Cllr Liz Kitchen and the council’s then chief executive Martin Pearson.

It all went downhill when Cllr Dawe and his cabal took over in 2012 and he gave out top cabinet jobs to Cllrs Vickers, Rowbottom, Circus, Cornell and O’Connell (past chairman and now scrutinising the people who made him chairman) whilst purging others like Cllrs Kitchen, Bailey, Burgess,Baldwin and Mitchell.

As Paul Kornycky’s excellent work shows, the present cabinet are sealing deals with developers that are totally inadequate to meet our growing local infrastructure needs.

It is not a question of ‘dictating developer’s profit margins’ rather that councillors like Mr O’Connell ensuring infrastructure funds are not pared back in order to allow developers to retain their unrealistic profit margins.

Dr GEOFFREY RICHARDSON

Tennyson Close, Horsham

__

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

Don’t miss out on all the latest breaking news where you live.

Here are four ways you can be sure you’ll be among the first to know what’s going on.

1 Make our website your homepage at www.wscountytimes.co.uk

2 Like our Facebook page at www.facebook.com/wscountytimes

3 Follow us on Twitter @wscountytimes

4 Register with us by clicking on ‘sign in’ (top right corner). You can then receive our daily newsletter AND add your point of view to stories that you read here.

And do share with your family and friends – so they don’t miss out!

The County Times – always the first with your local news.

Be part of it.