Thursday 17 June 2010

Garston waste site Public Inquiry - day three

Today was the day the Councillors got to speak as did members of the public.

We heard first from a representative of Bellway Homes, who was given quite a tough questioning by Jack Allen's lawyer.

We then had a series of speeches from local people and representatives. I spoke as did my Lib Dem colleague Peter Millea. Richard Oglethorpe, the third Cressington councillor, was stuck at home with sick children but he wrote something which I read out. He had also dug up some useful documents.

The public speeches were great. A real mixture of feeling and heavyweight research. I bet Jack Allen weren't expecting a professor of Physics!

We're all in this together so I don't want to be too party political, but I am disappointed that only one of the three Labour Councillors chose to speak. One hasn't even bothered to show up so far. The reason this matters is that it's important the Inspector sees a level of commitment. Still we will have to hope that the weight of argument so far carries the day (and there was certainly some brilliant argument today)

Tomorrow the Inspector is doing site visits. A list was drawn up today and people were asked to add locations (in fact there was one in Richard Oglethorpe's script).

After that there'll be quite a delay while the Inspector considers all the evidence (and there is huge amounts of written stuff as well as all the notes from this week). So I really can't say when we'll get the result. If I get a hint of a timescale I'll blog about it here.

Bit thanks to everyone who has helped by speaking, or researching, or getting signatures so far. Let's hope we win.

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