I listened to the discussion from the public gallery at Leamington town hall about the proposed Chandos Street development scheme at the overview and scrutiny meeting on July 13 and at the executive meeting on July 23.

At the overview and scrutiny meeting, only three of the 15 councillors spoke. Coun B Gill said we must keep up with Solihull and Banbury and that the development is good for Leamington. Coun A Boad said that it is an exciting development. Only chairman, Coun B Gifford, who was also in favour for the development as were all councillors present, expressed his concern over environment issues. And nobody else had anything to say.

In the executive meeting, the general feeling from councillors and executives was that there was a risk in not going forward with the scheme as it is. Coun D Shilton felt that the opportunity that the scheme gave represented only a low risk to the council. And in the end it seemed they unanimously supported the plan, because the chairman did not ask for "those against".

What was shocking and disappointing to me was the lack of proper discussion (or did they discuss very seriously in the private part of the meetings out of sight?). In the executive meeting, only two councillors raised points of consideration: Coun B Kirton about north-south division of Leamington and again Coun Gifford about environment and residents affected.

And none of the others seemed to have any worry at all.
Surely, they knew at least know there are many residents who are worried about such massive development against the background of this economic downturn, there are many residents who are worried about traffic (which is bad enough even now) and air quality, and there are nearly 60 adjoining private households that will suffer from the development (and the latest lowered roof does not make much difference in reality) – many of them will lose sunlight completely and some will lose their place to live!

The scheme breaches many national building planning regulations and guidelines (right of light, proximity, etc) including WDC's own.
I appreciate the fact that the councillors are in favour of the scheme. But they are our elected representatives and they have an obligation to explain what justification they have to make residents' life difficult and ignore standard building rules. They should try to convince us with proper data why and how it is financially feasible.

It is not good enough to vaguely hope that everything will be fine with the development. - Mineko Nagasaki, Portland Place West, Leamington.