Letter: ‘Horrified with proposals for beach huts’

The cabinet report is quoted as saying that this is a ‘bold, non-traditional approach to the financing of local government and therefore it is not without inherent risk that this approach has been assumed to underpin the proposed 22/23 budget’.

I questioned this at the overview and scrutiny committee, and asked what the beach hut associations felt, as I had been much involved working with the Christchurch beach huts associations previously.

After receiving a fudged reply from Cllr Mellor at the meeting, I am sure residents can appreciate my amazement and horror on receiving word from the beach hut associations across the conurbation that there had been no consultation.

Not only no consultation, but not even any word that this risky plan, underpinning the whole budget, was going to be put into the public domain.

I have had further correspondence from the association chairs, with the many questions which need to be answered on this ‘bold non-traditional’ plan, and I know that these have been sent to the leader of the council, Drew Mellor.

I can only trust that Cllr Mellor will answer the questions put to him, none of which did he answer at the overview and scrutiny committee where I challenged him on the plan.

At that meeting we were told that there was no business plan for us to study.

The whole scheme was apparently not yet even ‘on the back of a fag-packet’, but still held in Cllr Mellor’s head.

Yet it apparently underpins the whole budget.

I am horrified at this insouciant approach to a very serious proposed undertaking, and I am even more angry that the people most concerned, the beach hut associations, have not even been told about it, let alone consulted.

Councillor Mellor at the overview and scrutiny meeting said several times that this ‘bold non-traditional’ council budget was a common ploy in business.

All I can say is, what a way to run a business.

Councillor Lesley Dedman

Christchurch Independent