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Democracy at Village Level?

About a year ago I went to a Parish Council meeting in my village.  There is great pressure here to allow more and more building of houses in the village which is threatening to spoil the village and also over stretch the infra-structure.  The sewage system is stretched, the school is full and the doctor's surgery is not able to cope with more people.  Also the roads cannot cope with more traffic.  At the meeting there was a man from the District council with a power point presentation.  He said that most develpoment would be in three towns in the district.  Apparently our village would only have five more houses built in the next ten years.  It sounded ideal.  But gradually we realized that no matter what we said everything could just turn around and we would have as many houses as the government wanted.  This is what they call consultation!  But if you don't attend these meetings they can just say no one is bothered.  We now have a developer proposing to build 40 houses within the village.  What happens next is that the District Council can refuse planning permission.  However the last twice that they did this the developer's appeal was upheld.  This is democracy at work!! Democracy seems to be being eroded before our very eyes.

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