Council accused of stifling protests

May 15 2009 by Johnathon Menzies, Perthshire Advertiser Friday

ANGRY residents opposed to the controversial 13-storey incinerator earmarked for Perth’s waterfront have accused council planners of attempting to reduce the number of complaints by failing to maintain their website.

Bridgend, Gannochy, and Kinnoull Community Council member Dick Salvin said that, several times over the last month, people wishing to lodge an objection to the outline permission granted for the Shore Road plans have been unable to do so due technical difficulties with Perth and Kinross Council’s planning department’s online portal.

Retired architect Mr Salvin labelled the situation “diabolical”.

He told the PA: “In total, I understand that the submission section of the website has been down for around two weeks since the first week in April.

“I asked the council to make sure it was fixed and, to be fair to them, they did and it was up-and-running soon after my initial complaint.

“But the next time I tried to log-on the same error message appeared and, in this day and age, it’s diabolical.

“If the site’s down it means people wanting to look at objection letters can’t do so. Therefore, the amount of people wanting to get their opinions across becomes unknown.

“I kept trying to look on the site, but other people might just be put off and give up,” he said.

A spokesman for the local authority quickly dismissed suggestions that any malfunctions were a deliberate ploy to put off concerned members of the public, labelling it as “nonsense”.

He added that the much-publicised application, drawn-up by Grundon Waste Management Ltd, could be put before the council’s development control committee as early as July 22 – however, a concrete decision is yet to be made.

The spokesman continued by admitting: “We have experienced some difficulties with our public access system, which has not been accepting submissions on this application.

“We have extended the time period for submissions on this application as a result of this. We will now accept submissions until we prepare the report to the development control committee.

“Any suggestion that we are deliberately trying to prevent people from airing their views is nonsense,” he said.

He added that engineers were in the process of making sure the website was operating at full capacity at all times.

If technical difficulties continue, the local authority has asked the PA to point out that letters of complaint on the incinerator can be emailed to: DevelopmentManagement@pkc.gov.uk.

The address to send letters by post is: Development Management, The Environment Service, Pullar House, 35 Kinnoull Street, Perth PH1 5GD.