|
|
|
|
THE
TRUE FACTS REGARDING THE ORIGINAL DCC CONSULTATION
RESULTS, IN 2000
Since the year 2000, Derbyshire County
Council (DCC), has been consistently misinforming the
general public about the poll results of the
authority’s year 2000 public consultation on
Elvaston Castle Country Park. Here are the facts, nothing
more, nothing less.
The figure that the DCC quotes is 70% of
respondents in favour of disposing of the Elvaston
Estate. We would respectfully point out to them that this
is totally incorrect!.
In the year 2000, DCC distributed 187,000
questionnaires which asked five questions regarding the
Elvaston Estate. Although the wording was criticised by
some observers as having a bias towards the DCC’s
apparent objectives, the authority received approximately
2,100 replies.
The results page (see here) was published by the DCC, it is
the authority’s OWN document! The tallies are
printed with both the total number of respondents and
what their answers were and is then put in overall
percentage terms.
As you can see if you read them, the truth of
the matter is that, out of 1,737 people who voted on
question 5 (should the Estate be leased or sold), an
overwhelming majority, (1,357), or 78.13 in percentage
terms, voted AGAINST the lease or sale of the Estate,
63.1% STRONGLY disagreed!
This is highly significant in everything that
has followed since, because the DCC has stated on every
occasion that 70% were IN FAVOUR! As the figures clearly
display, only 276 of the 1,737 people who answered this
question were in favour of the proposal to lease out or
sell the Estate, in percentage terms 15.89%. 104 people,
or 5.99% had no preference either way.
Despite this, both Councillors and Council
Officers have used this consultation and the DCC’s
mis-interpretation of its own figures to back up its plan
to dispose of the Estate to commercial interests.
In November 2004, Alexander Devlin of the
Friends of Elvaston, wrote to the DCC questioning the
figures that had been wrongly quoted by the authority. A
reply, dated November 19, 2004, (see here) was sent to him by Mr Gerald
Tommy, the Assistant Chief Executive of the DCC. In it,
he states that in the public consultation exercise of
2000, 70% of respondents agreed that the Estate should be
leased or sold to release substantial income to be spent
on key County Council services – such as schools,
social services – across the County.
Alexander Devlin wrote back to Mr Tommy and
invited him to ‘revisit’ his figures. In Mr
Tommy’s reply of December 10, 2004, (see here) in reply (i) of ‘Two Further
Matters’, he reiterates that the figures which he
quoted from were correct.
We would now like to draw the reader’s
attention to a letter from the DCC’s Chief Executive
himself, Nick Hodgson, (see here) to Ms L Towner, an Investigator
from the Local Government Ombudsman’s Office, dated
May 20, 2005, the section marked (c) at the bottom of the
page. This was in relation to a complaint regarding the
whole issue, taken to the Ombudsman by Mr Devlin, on
behalf of the Friends of Elvaston. It states;
“....
You are correct in your analysis of the respondents.
Regrettably, the agree/disagree calculation was
transposed in Mr Tommy’s letter of 19 November
2004, for which the authority apologises ....”
On the following page it continues;
“....
I understand that Mr Tommy wrote to Mr Devlin,
apologising for the mistake and correcting it. Mr
Devlin’s original letter of 11 November 2004 was
essentially about consultation and this has been
addressed above ....”
Our colleague Alexander Devlin has never
received an apology from Mr Gerald Tommy.
The dictionary definition of the word
‘Transposed’, is;
‘To
put into a different place or order: transpose the
words of a sentence. See Synonyms at
‘reverse’.
Finally, we have to question the folly of
disposing of 325 acres of much loved public open space
(the first country park in England), which lies on the
edge of a City of a quarter of a million people, in the
south of a County which has a population 3 times that
size, on a consultation six years old, answered by less
than 1 (one!) per cent of the County’s residents,
which, even then, REJECTED disposal as an option? How
does this square with DCC’s motto, reproduced below?
Derbyshire County Council is an 'Excellent'
council working to improve the lives of local people by
delivering high quality services.
Despite being so wrong for so long, has DCC
revisited its decision to carry out its proposal? Did
anyone in DCC circulate this information to all the
Councillors who voted for the proposal? Did it publish
this information in any local newspapers? Did they even
apologise to Mr Devlin? The answer to all of the above is
a resounding NO.
|
