| Topic: | Reply | |
| Posted by: | Gordon Southwell | |
| Date/Time: | 17/08/21 10:37:00 |
I think it is unfair on Peter Mason to suggest he is trying to move the goalposts. It's not him that has done this but Andrew Gilligan and Boris Johnson. Cllr Mason agreed to the consultation knowing full well what the outcome would be. He had unfettered to all the data from Commonplace and would have known that accusations that the system could have been gamed was nonsense. The consultation results suggest that it actually understated the extent of opposition. He therefore believe that the consultation exercise would provide him with a way out and cut the ground from the group of councillors who still believed these schemes were a good idea. However, Gilligan saw what he was doing and promptly withdrew the borough's funding. As the level of opposition to a scheme will not be seen as evidence that the scheme is not working by the government, Cllr Mason has to hope that council officers can produce convincing evidence from the data that they were a bad idea. If they can't convince the government they have made their case then the risk is that Ealing remains beyond the pale for future government funding which means that significant cuts in other areas will be required. The problem for the council is that the quality of data collected appears to be poor looking at a sample of detailed reports for individual LTNs and even if you didn't have the massive distortion of the pandemic it is difficult to use the statistics to make a convincing case either way. |