Consultation

The Residents Survey

Centros Miller and Lancaster Council have evidently taken their definition of 'consultation' from Ambrose Pierce's Devils Dictionary published 1896-1906.

Residents of Alfred Street dutifully filled in the Centros Miller 'residents survey' in January 2006. When, eventually, the results of this survey were put in to the public domain five months after the survey was completed, and three days after the crucial cabinet meeting in July, Alfred St had been left off the survey results. The reason for this, we were told, was that Alfred St residents had been consulted SEPARATELY from the survey. This is a lie.

Centros Miller then promised that they will do further 'consultation'. It seems reasonable to expect that if further consultation does not result in views which coincide with theirs, those views will be disregarded or marginalised in some way. Our council has already made up it's mind to go ahead with this development. They are paying lip service to the mandatory consultation process and have never directly engaged local residents in a consultation process themselves.

As a comparison, have a look at the results of the comprehensive survey carried out by Real Planning for Lancaster in 2003 compared to the superficial Centros Miller surveys. We have the Centros Miller survey of residents and the survey of city centre shoppers and on the Castle View project website, their equally superficial residents survey conclusions and city centre survey conclusions.

The Council cabinet completely ignored the local residents survey which doesn't fit in with their plans to force the development through whatever the views of Lancaster residents and have so far failed to engage in their own consultation process.