Feeling fobbed off

FURTHER to my letter (Gazette, September 8), I did receive a reply to my letter to the chief executive of Arun District Council, but I was given less than half the detail you were given (and passed to your readers).

We’ve seen this before – Arun seems to fob off an “ordinary” taxpayer with a non-answer but you or a councillor will be given good, much fuller, information.

I feel obliged to return to the matter, but in view of the above, I am writing to you only this time.

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At the last moment, the day before Arun’s development control committee was to consider the matter, the council’s estates department withdrew the application.

This, one can only presume, was to save the embarrassment of a publicised refusal of the application – it seems that the planning department agrees with me and others that it would be unbecoming of the council to deface its own building with temporary advertising signs.

Process and bureaucracy gone mad again.

How much time, effort and thus money has been wasted on this by council staff?

Could this not all have been sorted in a couple of minutes at the coffee machine and a short note on a file?

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Just the sort of thing the Coalition says it wants to stop, so that local authorities can reduce something of the burden on council tax payers.

John Morris

Maltravers Drive

Littlehampton

A spokeswoman for Arun District Council replied: “We are sorry that Mr Morris has been unhappy with the communication he has received from Arun District Council.

“Arun never ‘fobs off’ ordinary tax payers.

“It is for the tax payers of Littlehampton that the Give us Our Hospital campaign is being pursued so strongly across all avenues and it is the taxpayers of Littlehampton who have rallied to its cause and support.

“It was considered that other methods of showing support for the campaign would have greater impact than the temporary signs, which is why the application was withdrawn.”

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