Viewpoint: Community event fee is a 'lose-lose' idea

Email Viewpoint letters to jamesp@baylismedia.co.uk or write to Viewpoint, Newspaper House, 48 Bell Street, Maidenhead, Berkshire, SL6 1HX.

Park this lose-lose idea of community event fee

I am very disappointed by the council’s proposal to start charging community and charity groups for the use of parks and recreation areas within the borough.

Myself and a small band of volunteers have run the Easter Family Fun Day in Grenfell Park for the last 11 years.

Over 750 adults and children come to our annual event.

It makes great use of the park, is low cost and open to every part of our community.

We make a small profit each year, 100 per cent of which is donated to Daisy’s Dream.

We simply cannot afford the proposed charge of £525 planned by the council and we would be forced to cancel our March 30, 2024 event.

Charging community and charity groups is not going to fill the council’s £203million debt.

The proposed charges will lead to charity events being cancelled, this will generate no net income to the council but the community will lose out on these fantastic events.

This is a lose-lose situation if ever I saw one.

Please can the council see sense and remove these charges for community and charity events.

ADAM HUNTER

Maidenhead Easter Family Fun Day

Damage limitation is not a proper apology

I was neither shocked nor surprised to read your online story of December 6, ‘Council apologises for ‘human error’ in publishing personal email addresses of residents.’

It is yet another example of the sloppiness I have been highlighting for many years.

However, given the seriousness of this error and RBWM’s reaction to it, I was disappointed there was no follow up in your print edition last Friday.

Hence my letter.

RBWM’s statement, which I assume you reproduced verbatim, distorted the true position to such a degree that they assert residents had explicitly consented to the publication of their details when, in fact, they had not even done so implicitly.

Given this, I can only conclude there was a deliberate attempt to mislead.

The accepted procedure would have been for the council to follow the seven-step process laid out by the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO).

The ICO even go to the trouble of including a self-assessment tool to help determine whether the breach is reportable.

I tried it and under these circumstances, it was. Yet RBWM insist it is not.

Based on correspondence I have seen the breach was acknowledged on the 6th at 14:28hrs.

Your story, including their quote, appeared two-and-a-half hours later.

I wonder how much thought went into their conclusions and remarks in that brief interlude?

The reported comments look like an unnecessarily hasty rush to control the story, rather than the measured, considered response advocated by the ICO.

One of the recommended steps is to contact all the individuals affected and to take measures to safeguard them.

I know that has not happened, as one individual has already been identified thanks to the breach and attacked on social media.

No one contacted him.

The officers who authored this rushed and self-serving bulletin should be held to account, as must any lead member who authorised its release.

And, I trust, that is what the ICO will do, after they adjudicate the multiple complaints I know have already been submitted.

JOHN BALDWIN

Oldfield

Maidenhead

Get football club’s move back on track

RBWM was due to reconsider the ludicrous decision to betray Maidenhead United FC this Wednesday.

However, as you might imagine, this appears to be a cynical ruse by cabinet councillors.

The cabinet paper on Wednesday to ‘assist’ councillors in reconsidering their decision does not formally recognise any of the benefits associated with MUFC’s proposals, but contains all the negatives.

You honestly could not make it up – who do they think they are kidding?

Indeed, there is no evidence whatsoever that any proper cost-benefit analysis has been undertaken that convinced them to oppose the scheme.

Unless they can demonstrate that a proper cost-benefit analysis has been undertaken that convinced them of their decision, cabinet should empower full council to make the decision informed by a proper cost-benefit analysis.

The fact that these councillors, particularly the cabinet member for sport, have not produced a cost-benefit analysis to justify their decision is a disgrace.

These cabinet councillors are attempting to bullet MUFC’s ambitions and by extension its future.

Cabinet councillors should do the right thing by the club, its supporters and many thousands of community beneficiaries in past, present and future generations and reverse this decision.

If they will not do so, then they should empower full council to make the decision informed by a proper cost-benefit analysis.

When I was cabinet member for sport, my view was that MUFC should be able to progress its planning application and let the planning processes consider the application, including challenges raised by neighbouring clubs.

Regretfully, the shameless political circus created by these new councillors has been a total waste of time and apparently totally uninformed about the benefits of the MUFC’s proposals.

It is time to get this hugely beneficial scheme back on track, appoint a new cabinet member for sport to restore trust and focus on key issues like taking responsibility for RBWM’s finances (rather than constantly trying to blame others).

ROSS McWILLIAMS

Former cabinet member for sport & leisure at RBWM

Concerned by impact of bus route changes

There is currently a consultation on changes to bus routes.

As the ward councillors for Clewer and Dedworth East we are most concerned about the loss of the W1 service with no suitable replacement meaning that residents who cannot drive or walk will no longer be able to access the only GP surgery in Dedworth.

It is therefore important that residents impacted by this respond to the consultation which closes on 20 December. https://bit.ly/485agxm

Cllrs ALISON CARPENTER and HELEN PRICE

tBfI, Clewer and Dedworth East

Rejoining EU or Single Market will not help

In a recent letter (Viewpoint, December 1) James Aidan claimed as a fact that overall ‘the British economy has suffered a four per cent financial hit from Brexit’.

He offered no source in support of that bald assertion, but I think we both know that his number has come from the OBR, the Office for Budget Responsibility.

And by now we should both know that this is a forecast for the cumulative long term erosion of our economic growth, not an estimate of the Brexit impact so far.

They moot that 1.6 per cent of GDP was lost by May 1, 2021, which they reasonably put down to ‘uncertainty weighing on investment and capital deepening’.

However they fail to point out that the uncertainty had been unnecessarily prolonged and intensified by anti-democratic opponents of Brexit trying to stop it.

The ONS, the Office for National Statistics, struggled to track GDP during the pandemic, yet we are to believe that the OBR detected this small Brexit effect.

But even if what they say is true nothing can be done to reverse that minor damage; the loss could not be recovered by rejoining the EU, or its Single Market.

In fact what Rejoiners are campaigning for would lead to a return to the uncertainty about our relationship with the EU, and another dose of economic damage.

Dr D R COOPER

Belmont Park Avenue

Maidenhead