Echo, 2 January 2008, letters page - Fabienne Morgan, West Thorpe, Basildon

COUNCIL proceedings need to be speeded up (Dec 20), so Basildon residents will only get three minutes to voice their opposition to any given planning application.
   No doubt a certain amount of time may be wasted during these sessions, but not always by residents.
   If I look back on the meeting that took place on March 15, 2006, which was seeing six different applications being debated, the first one was admittedly a bit of a shambles.
   The various residents who spoke seemed to know what they were talking about as they had done their research. No time was wasted by them.
   However, the council officer who did the presentation, complete with slides and everything, did not know his yards and metres from his elbow.
   He was so confused that the chairman asked him, sharply, to clarify what he was trying to say.
   There was more time wasted when a resident had to inquire why two letters in the previous months, seeking clarification ahead of the present meeting, had not been answered.
   Furthermore, the proceedings were made very difficult to follow as it was bell ringing practice at the bell tower!
   At the end, the officer was instructed by the chairman to find out who owned a certain neglected building.
   As the building still looks no better 22 months on and no one has been notified of an answer, we can assume that he is still digging? This seems like very slow work.
   Perhaps, if council officers were a bit more efficient, things would be better and there would be less time wasted at the meetings.
  Then the council would not resort to eroding residents' democratic rights by effectively gagging them.