 Burgess Hill Town Council Turn Public Meeting Private Without Explanation
25th April 2017
Ahhhh, the joys of having a council where one political party dominates. It means that you can change the rules as you go along, including when to decide that meetings are no longer open to the public.
For a week, Burgess Hill Town Council had been advertising on their website that there was a meeting of the Strategic Development Key Area Group taking place today (Tuesday 25th April)
The listing of this meeting was deleted from the website on Monday lunchtime. No explanation was given.
Your reporter just so happened to be in the town on Tuesday afternoon and at around 4 o'clock I spotted Cllr Richard Cherry, Mandy Thomas-Atkin and others entering the town council Help Point.
As I made my way up Church Walk, Jonathan Ash-Edwards - cabinet member for finance and the deputy leader of Mid Sussex District Council - was walking towards the Help Point as well. We said hello to each other and I asked if he was off to the 'secret meeting', he just kept walking.
So good readers, the questions are:
- Why did Burgess Hill Town Council list the meeting and then remove it?
- Why was the agenda never published?
- Are Key Area group meetings now closed to the public? If so, why?
- Was the meeting commercially sensitive?
- Why was Jonathan Ash-Edwards from MSDC at the meeting?
- Will we ever get to discover what was discussed?
We'll endeavour to bring you all, or at least some of the answers very soon.
Something big must be going on that the council don't want us to know about, and you know, we are only the people that live here, it's not like the decisions they make affect us or anything....
| Spread the word, Burgess Hill Town Council turned a public meeting into a 'secret' one at the last minute with no explanation
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