http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1438419/Christopher-Booker%27s-Notebook.html

Christopher Booker's Notebook
By Christopher Booker
Last Updated: 8:28PM BST 09/08/2003
Never mind the voters

A sadly typical vignette of the current state of local government is provided by a strange little row raging in the Norfolk market town of Swaffham. In a recent "parish poll", residents voted by 486 to 103 against the plans by the town council (most of whose members had been elected unopposed) to spend £300,000 on an extension to their town hall. The mayor, Councillor Ian Sherwood, who also happens to be the agent for the local Conservative MP, Gillian Shephard, said he had no intention of heeding the voters' wishes, and would prefer to listen to the "silent majority" of those who had not bothered to vote.

This curious story began when land bequeathed for the benefit of poor people in Swaffham, which was used for allotments, was sold for development for £1 million. Of this, £635,000 was given to the council, which invested it at 4 per cent and then took out a £500,000 loan over 25 years from the Public Works Loan Board at just over 5 per cent. The interest on the deposit will be used to pay the loan interest, leaving a shortfall of £10,000 a year.

The council then announced that it would use £300,000 of the loan to build an extension to its dilapidated town hall, to accommodate officials of Breckland district council - a registrar, a citizens' adviser and a "Breckland presence" officer - who visit the town for half a day each week.

At this point Swaffham residents, led by Margaret Cannon, who runs an engineering firm with her husband, began to ask questions. Why was it necessary to spend so much on an extension for the benefit of visiting officials of another council, when the town hall itself needs £230,000 worth of long overdue repairs? Could this money, which was supposed to benefit the people of Swaffham, not be spent more appropriately? To remedy, for example, the scandalous state of the recreation ground, with its disgusting lavatories used by drug addicts. Why, instead of spending the windfall directly, had it been necessary to use it to take out a loan, at such a loss?

When the answers provided by the mayor, whose fellow councillors are forbidden to speak to the press, seemed inadequate, Mrs Cannon and her allies called for an official parish poll. Although the polling station was open for only five hours, and there were no polling cards to inform voters that a referendum was taking place, the turnout was considerably higher than in recent elections to the council itself, and the verdict was overwhelming: that the money should not be spent on extending the town hall.
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The mayor then announced, without calling a council meeting, that he would ignore the vote. Campaigners attempting to put their views directly to councillors have been told that this constituted "harrassment" and that legal advice was being taken to stop them.

The campaigners therefore asked their MP, Mrs Shephard, for help, noting that she had just launched a campaign against regional government, on the grounds that she wanted to "keep democracy local". Handing more power to "unelected quangocrats", she said, would risk "alienating more of the electorate by making them more cynical about the electoral process". Last Friday Mrs Shephard replied that she was not prepared to get involved, no doubt much to the relief of her agent, Mayor Sherwood.