The whole purpose of the petition was to enable the community to discuss with the Council the spillway proposal and the reasons for our objection to it. But rather than discuss it, when we presented it at the Cheshire East Growth and Economy meeting on 26/1/24 it was voted that the petition just be 'noted'.
The Friends of Poynton Pool Chairman gave a 3-minute presentation as the petitioner and then six other Friends of Poynton Pool representatives each made a 2-minute statement.
Two of these were reservoir experts. Retired reservoir Designer John Borthwick and Reservoir Engineer Stewart Tennant, who has 35 years experience and is currently working for a multidisciplinary service company called GHD. The committee chairman Councillor Mark Goldsmith tried to discredit our experts’ statements by questioning their credentials. This questioning was then halted by Councillor O'Leary, who asserted that the chairman had been rude to three of the speakers. The chairman made light of this and it became clear that there was an intention to discredit Friends of Poynton Pool as irrational, obsessive campaigners only interested in saving trees at any cost.
I would encourage you to read our statements here.
Even though we submitted the petition in October 2023, a month before the Council submitted their planning application, it was suggested that because there was a live planning application the petition could not be discussed and they would simply 'note' it.
The committee clerk said that the options were to:
- Note the petition (there had been a petition)
- Write to the petition organiser outlining the council’s views
- Ask for an officer’s report to be considered at a later date.
The chairman asked for the petition to be ‘noted’ which is another way of saying what we had said was not going to be discussed or make any difference to anything. Councillor O’Leary asked that the third option be taken, but this was voted down. Importantly, it was voted down 6 to 5. Interestingly, it was voted down by councillors who later declared an interest. It seems to us that they should not have voted, and if they had not, the vote would have gone in Councillor O’Leary’s favour. From this point, it became clear that there must be some underlying agenda, and it seemed that there was a concerted effort to move this project forward against the wishes of the community.
Worse was yet to come. The chairman then read out a pre-drafted statement where he described Friends of Poynton Pool as:
“a group dedicated to campaign against this safety work” and then went on to say “…today the Friends of Poynton Pool want us to dismiss all that (referring to large body of evidence) and instead believe their technical advisor, the man who for the past 35 years has worked for a company making hair straighteners.”
He had taken no account of the information and views that had been presented by us at the meeting and he was called out on this.
You can listen to the meeting and form your own view on whether the Poynton community (around half the voting population signed the petition) has had a fair hearing. The majority, if not all, those present at the meeting thought we had been short-changed by the maneuvering. If you haven’t already, MAKE YOUR VOICE HEARD. Listen to the recording and consider submitting a complaint.
Did councillor Mark Goldsmith and those councillors who did not declare their interests, comply with the council’s code of conduct?
A report from Acting Director of Place Peter Skates responding to the petition was, again, prepared prior to the meeting and was largely repetition of most of the communications we have received from the council’s officers and members. Read our responses to the report.
I will leave you with a quotation from engineer Stewart Tennant’s statement which clearly shows our intention is not to stop the safety work, but to aim for an alternative, more balanced solution which is aligned to the wishes of the community.
“From my visit and experience it appears relatively straightforward to upgrade the existing overflow capacity to pass the design flood, whilst carrying out some nominal regulation and raising of the crest.
This is a conventional, robust future proof engineering solution, and it comes without the adverse visual impact, loss of social value, loss of habit, loss of acoustic screening, loss of carbon capture that comes with option 3C.”