There we have it, straight from the horse's mouth so to speak. Section 106 money (shorthand for sweetners given by planning applicants to the council to help smooth the application's progress) is not the property of the District Council, it's for the exclusive use of the area in which the money was raised, not for the greater good of the area as a whole.
Chris Hunt, who bears the splendid title of 'Portfolio Holder for Strategic Planning' has explained why Leatherhead is to receive more than £300,000 to enhance the town centre and Dorking gets nothing.
Since MVDC appear to be totally dedicated to not allowing development of any kind in Dorking it seems unlikely that the town will ever enjoy any meaningful investment by MVDC. Perhaps someone could refresh my memory, when Wickes in Vincent Lane was developed did we see any of the Section 106 money? For that matter how about the old gas works site and housing development at Deepdene roundabout, etc. etc.
Does anyone have memories of how the town has benefited?
Pepin
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
The money was spent on a cockerel !!!!!
ReplyDeleteITS COMING HOME TO ROOST !!!!!!!!!!!!
ReplyDeleteLOL
I don't think government money was spent on the Cockerel...
ReplyDeleteSection 106 money is from developers and is not government money !!!
ReplyDeleteI appreciate it's not government money, what I'm suggesting is that possibly the money might be considered as destined for the greater good of the district, MVDC's seem to believe (perhaps correctly) it's only going to be used by specific areas and groups.
ReplyDeleteI see that MVDC is talking about having to make cuts in the budgets by something like £200,000.
ReplyDeleteThe first cut should be 20% of all monies paid to councellors who through a bad decision lost £150,000 in revenue and decreased visitors to the town by some 4% by increasing car parking charges.
The second cut should be 20% in salary to the officers of MVDC who gave the bad advise to the councellors.
This should be done as the people who pay for the services are the one's who suffer first.
Decision makers should be made more responsible for the actions they make and not just sit in ivory towers playing politics.
Leslie Gilbert
sorry everybody should read councillors and not councellors many regreats for the error
ReplyDeleteLeslie Gilbert
Mr Gilbert, you are correct. Our councillors seem content to make cuts in services to council taxpayers and ready to accept silly advice where car parking charges are concerned, the latter resulted in a six figure shortfall in money they had budgeted for - and that was easily predictable.
ReplyDeleteIt would not be unreasonable to look for a cutback in the expenses councillors pay themselves (still in excess of the job seeker's allowance on an annualised basis). I also recall that towards the end of last year MVDC was proposing job cuts at Pipbrook - no sign of those and no surprises either. For MVDC all to often the infliction of pain is a one way process, the council taxpayer can suffer but not the organisation.
They all need to wake-up to what is happening in the real world of Dorking, it's not nice.
Next month they will again start the budgeting process for 2010/11 and will be, again, seeking big increases to make-up for their foolishness in recent years.
Pepin
Because of the lack of activity here another blog the same as the original Dorking bloghas been set up go to www.allnewdorkingblog.blogspot.com
ReplyDelete