Recent draft Minutes show Faringdon Council is planning to "write a letter to the Secretary of State explaining the difficulties Faringdon has faced" during the Neighbourhood Plan process. Why, we ask, would the busy Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government be interested in Faringdon Council's "difficulties"? Is the Council hoping a powerful hand will pull it out of the deep hole it has dug for itself? A hole the size of Wicklesham Quarry. The Minutes (9th March) record that the "independent examiner had declined to examine the Plan a second time". So far a new Independent Examiner has not been named, but we hope that the proposal to turn Wicklesham Quarry into a 20 acre industrial/ warehousing site will form part of a public, oral hearing. We have sent the Independent Examiner a copy of Oxfordshire County Council's report on Grundon's 2015 application to renew its licence to operate at Wicklesham Quarry - even though extraction finished in 2010. In it, Deputy Director Bev Hindle states that Wicklesham Quarry's restoration in accordance with its planning conditions: “is of primary importance for the environment and constitutes an imperative reason of overriding public interest”, and he confirms the County Council’s responsibility to “provide for restoration and aftercare at the earliest opportunity to be carried out to high environmental standards”. This time the Deputy Director placed new restrictions on Grundon to prevent them importing any further material - except for the purposes of carrying out the agreed Restoration Plan. Local people are pleased to see signs that restoration is underway. Wicklesham's ponds, which are established breeding habitats of European Protected Species, Great Crested Newts, have been fenced off in order to protect them and encourage the pond fringe habitat to re-grow. So what exactly are Faringdon Council's "difficulties"? Could they include the ones the Independent Examiner recognized when confronted with dozens of objections from local people? We have pointed out the Neighbourhood Plan's failures to meet the 'Basic Conditions', its omissions of key evidence and misrepresentation of basic facts - such as the FNP’s suggestion that Wicklesham Quarry is a 'brownfield site'. A request has been made to Faringdon Council for a copy of the letter to the Secretary of State. We are confident that the Secretary of State is NOT about to give Faringdon Neighbourhood Plan a green light through the planning system, as Faringdon Council has sought to do for Wicklesham Quarry, and he may be as perplexed as we are about why the Council is resorting to what looks like a last-ditch attempt to defend its Neighbourhood Plan.