It’s been a little while since we did a proper local consultation roundup hasn’t it? Though we no longer regularly repost local news stories, we do still keep an eye on goings on in local authorities, and you can be sure that whenever there Is controversy or something curious going on we’ll be sniffing around. This week, we noted a couple that fall into the first category, and one that falls into the broader second category. So, shall we begin with the controversy?

Both actually intersect with some of the same issues. The first was the extension of a consultation in Maidstone over 5000 new homes, over concerns that although 6,500 leaflets had been printed, not all were delivered meaning that some residents were not informed of consultations. Regular readers will know that reaching the right people is a very important, if somewhat under-studied principle of consultation. We sometimes call it the ‘Gunning gap’, as it’s not referred to in the Gunning principles, though it has been considered in many other court cases to varying degrees.

In Maidstone, the lack of flyers was compounded by the public exhibition being advertised being held eight miles away up the M20 at Hollingbourne, an inconvenience which led to a boycott of the event by locals. Further events have been organised, and this time residents will not be expected to book in advance, so the Council hope people might be more inclined to drop in. With opposition to the plans high amongst locals though, they’re unlikely to have helped themselves with the missteps over the flyers.

Whether the 8-mile distance constitutes a further problem is a matter of interesting discussion, and one that recurs in our second example, local dissatisfaction with the consultation process over a proposed new Amazon fulfilment centre near Cleckheaton in West Yorkshire. These centres often prove controversial amongst locals, we’ve even seen them in court a couple of times, firstly in the Halton v Halebank case which looked at duration of consultations, and also in the more recent Swainsthorpe Parish Council v Norfolk County Council case, an interesting one about the capacities in which councils respond to consultations.

In Cleckheaton, locals are also arguing that they haven’t been invited to events, and that the one public drop-in exhibition they are aware of is not even being held in the same council ward as the site but four miles away in Gomersal, an area which, according to them, is difficult to reach via public transport for any who need it. Furthermore they argue that a number of venues much closer would have been viable for the event.

So, are these both valid concerns, or is this a case of concentrated opposition grasping on to procedural issues in the hope that it might derail projects? We’d be loathe to decide one way or another, but they’re certainly valid concerns in that they remind us of the need to carefully consider accessibility and siting of events in light of the potential audience. In both cases, it would almost certainly have been better to host events as locally as possible to the actual sites to make it easy for those wishing to comment to get there and participate. Ultimately, it will come down to a factor of reasonableness- was it reasonable, given all the circumstances to host them further away? We don’t have all the facts, so we can’t authoritatively comment, but generally we’d say that the further away you’re planning to hold an event, the better your arguments should be for doing so.

The third case is also one that is causing a headache for a local council, but is also worth a look at because it highlights what will be a growing problem in light of an increasing (and increasingly elderly) population. Whitby, on the east coast has an increasing problem with the dead. Not in a Bram Stoker sense, far from it, Whitby tourist board is no doubt ever grateful for his vampiric advertisement of the town and its Abbey in Dracula. Rather their problem is that they are running out of space in the town’s cemeteries and graveyards.

Anticipating this problem, the Council has been running a consultation programme looking at new sites for interment. The preferred site on Larpool Lane has received a somewhat muted response, and alternatives suggested in the course of the consultation are similarly nonviable. At present, the Council has concluded that it is unlikely a suitable site exists within the town.

We don’t often see these sort of consultations, but we’re likely to increasingly do so, and the problem is going to get worse. In the introduction to his excellent book “At Home: A Short History of Private Life”, Bill Bryson talks to a local archaeologist in Norfolk:

“Have you ever noticed,” Brian asked as we stepped into the churchyard, “how country churches nearly always seem to be sinking into the ground?”

I allowed … that I had no idea.

“Well it isn’t because the church is sinking.” … “It’s because the churchyard has risen. How many people do you suppose are buried here?”

I glanced appraisingly at the gravestones and said, “I don’t know. Eighty? A hundred?”

“I think that’s probably a bit of an underestimate,” Brian replied with an air of kindly equanimity. “Think about it. A country parish like this has an average of 250 people in it, which translates into roughly a thousand adult deaths per century, plus a few thousand more poor souls that didn’t make it to maturity. Multiply that by the number of centuries that the church has been there and you can see that what you have here in not eighty or a hundred burials, but probably something more on the order of, say, twenty-thousand.”

Whilst the problem is not so acute in towns, where churches and graveyards tend to be younger (most come from the post-industrialisation population boom era), with a national population that is always growing, and the demographic changes of people having fewer children and at older ages, it doesn’t take a genius to see that soon it might not just be Whitby having serious problems. One to keep an eye out for- we’ll let you know if anything similar rises. If you hear screaming, then something else has risen…