Ealing Council’s web site Home Page is featuring – as its main news story – an Ealing Council press release ‘Acton residents called up for Town Hall team’ (PR 19, dated 24th September, 2009). The story invites Acton residents ‘…to get involved and help shape the future of Acton’. These words come from the mouth of the Council’s Regeneration supremo Councillor David Millican. It is he who is the elected Member responsible for the Local Development Framework (LDF)
What the release does not allude to – incredibly – is the LDF Public Consultation meeting taking place in Acton in just five days time (7:00pm , St Mary’s Church, The Mount, Acton, Thursday 1st October) at which the future of Acton 2011 to 2026 will be publicly debated.
Doesn’t the Publicity Department talk to Cabinet Councillors? Doesn’t the Planning Department talk to the Publicity Department? Doesn’t the Regeneration Team talk to the Publicity Department etc, etc – you get the picture. It would appear that they don’t.
So far of out of 240,000 adult residents in Ealing, only 120 or so have turned up at the three LDF Public Consultation meetings. This is a publicity failure of massive proportions or – even worse – it suggests that Council bosses don’t want residents to attend these meetings.
Eric Leach
26th September, 2009