Market Harborough showground: Councillors take control (Market Harborough Liberal Democrats)

Market Harborough Liberal Democrats <info@marketharboroughlibdems.org.uk>

Market Harborough showground: Councillors take control

December 15, 2011 7:51 PM

Within a few days of Cllr Phil Knowles asking the question "What is happening over the Market Harborough Agricultural Showground" the matter has been put before two of Harborough District Council's committees.

In answer to questioning from Phil it was revealed that the council had received a request months ago to agree to a delay of a year to the opening date as a "variation request" to the s106 agreement had been submitted but it emerged that rather than this being highlighted to councillors, Officers were expected to make the decision under their delegated powers.

This triggered alarm bells for Phil and as he asked why councillors had not been told. Did members appreciate that the decision was being put on the shoulders of the officers under the delegated powers? Shouldn't this, a major change to such a substantial scheme, be decided by councillors?

At Phil's request the matter has now been debated by two of the council's committees and is set to be referred to a third. The constitutional review committee supported Phil's call to look again at the delegation mechanism regarding 106 agreements and voted unanimously for a full report to be provided to its next meeting so that councillors can decide members involvement on all such issues.

This week's planning committee was given the opportunity to debate the matter as Phil called the matter to be put before councillors for decision rather than officers. Councillors sitting on the planning committee considered the request for an extended period of time to complete the opening of the show ground and listened to the officers' recommendation to grant the request for a delay, but the officers' recommendation was rejected and councillors refused to accept the delay, insisting that the original agreement should be 'honoured with the opening set for around September 2012'.

Supporting the reason for Phil's call in and expressing concern about what seemed to be a period of months when the matter had been sitting with officers but councillors wereunaware of what was going on, members of the planning committee supported a call by Cllr Barbara Johnson for the whole matter to be referred to the Councils Scrutiny Resources Committee asking them to investigate the monitoring responsibility.