Viewpoint: Maidenhead United move and praise for the postal service

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

Decision came late on football club move

More than three months have passed since the Lib Dems affirmed their decision to renege on an existing agreement with Maidenhead United.

It left thousands of residents feeling aggrieved at the disdain shown to such a remarkable community institution.

That decision, however, is far less sinister from what I am about to discuss: an apparent breach of the council’s own constitution.

It’s slightly technical, but I will explain the process as clearly as I can.

On April 4, 2023, executive director of place Andrew Durrant – having considered objections to the open space notice published in May 2022 – published his decision to lease the land at Braywick to the football club.

As possible with any ‘key decision’, the lease to MUFC was called-in by an overview and scrutiny panel a week later.

At that meeting, councillors voted to ‘refer the decision back to the decision-maker for reconsideration, setting out the nature of the panel’s concerns’.

Under the constitution – which is effectively the council’s own rulebook on how business should be conducted – the decision-maker (in this case, Andrew Durrant) has 28 days to ‘consider’ their original decision.

Now, ‘consider’ is one of those words in local politics which has no clear definition.

Fortunately, the council’s head of law & governance, Elaine Browne, clarified this in an email made public via FOI request:

“In terms of timescales Andrew is required to make his ‘decision’ within 28 days from the O&S Panel (in accordance with the call-in procedure) – his decision can simply be to send to Cabinet for decision in accordance with Para A2.3 of Part 3 of the Constitution.”

The relevant overview and scrutiny panel met on Thursday, April 20.

Alas, the decision on the next steps had to be made by Thursday, May 18 according to RBWM’s own constitution.

Except it wasn’t.

The decision was not actually made until Monday, May 22 – four days after the 28-day deadline.

It seems RBWM breached its own rulebook to send the Braywick decision back to cabinet.

We all know what happened after that.

Worse yet, the FOI request shows multiple instances of council officers referring to the passed deadline, seemingly aware that the constitution had been breached.

The failure of the Royal Borough to adhere to its own constitution is not just a matter of administrative oversight; it undermines the trust of the community and raises serious questions about the integrity of decision-making within the council.

No matter your views on the club’s relocation, the debacle raises important questions:

1.Given the failure to meet the 28-day deadline, should the original decision to lease the land to MUFC have stood?

2.If there are no ramifications for failing to meet the 28-day deadline, what’s the point of having it in the first place?

3.Why did council officers suddenly feel the need to refer the original decision – which was conditional on planning permission anyway – back to cabinet?

SHAY BOTTOMLEY

Maidenhead

Flavour of Rome for this deluded mighty

The meeting of RBWM’s Corporate Overview and Scrutiny panel on March 25 was a strange affair.

There were zero Neros and not a fiddle in site, yet the whiff of Rome burning around the palaces of the deluded mighty was thick in the air.

The first two and a half hours were given over to consider the Council Plan 2024-2028, a pious combination of bureaucratic double speak and lachrymose sentimentality.

Hilariously, at the end of much pontification no one could remember what had been said so no resolution could be drafted on the night.

Cllr Howard pointed out that they could all have been at home having a nice night’s sleep instead.

That alternative would certainly have served the residents better than the immemorable blasts of hot air that he and the other panellists served up.

There then followed an item entitled ‘Inequalities Project and Think Family’ which was so baffling that not even the presenting officer could make sense of his own slides.

He dried so badly that mere prompting from the wings could not solve his difficulties. His stand-in had to take over.

I hope the young man recovers from a nasty case of stage fright.

Yet, when it finally came time to consider a looming c.£2million gap in the 2024/25 Budget all the administration stooges rallied and found their ‘A’ game.

Operation ‘Close Our Eyes, Cover Our Ears and Pray’ was trotted out again and, despite the brave efforts of Cllr Maureen Hunt, the inconvenient facts were conveniently ignored.

Cllr Julian Tisi, was bold enough to dismiss it as a ‘storm in a tea cup’.

Well, it’s closer to a typhoon in a swimming pool and will be more than enough to sink his feeble little boat.

Still, one good thing did emerge.

New world’s records were set for mentioning ‘KPIs’, ‘granularity’ and ‘light touch, right touch’, so the three hours, forty minutes and fifty seconds weren’t entirely wasted.

I despair.

JOHN BALDWIN

Boyn Hill

Swift letter delivery does still happen

I know that postal services have been considered to be expensive and not very effective of late.

However, just to balance things, I posted a letter in Maidenhead, near HSBC bank on Tuesday afternoon (March 26), 2nd class to Yorkshire.

On Wednesday afternoon, I received a text to say that my letter had arrived.

That afternoon I went to Highway post office to post a belated Easter card to an address in London and the recipient rang me Thursday to thank me.

That was also 2nd class.

To my mind excellent service and I’d like to say thank you to the postal staff.

Much appreciated and well done.

JOYCE BANKS

Silvertrees Drive

Maidenhead

Grammar we love you, Oh grammar – we do

Your correspondent, Diane Hayes, has opened a can of worms (Viewpoint, March 29)!

Of course there is Registry instead of the Register Office and then we have brought and bought, although he is more likely to have brought her a cup of tea rather than bought it, but the flowers are more likely to have been bought before they were brought to her!

Them and these causes confusion sometimes as the former refers to a group of people or things and the latter is specific, and in the plural the ‘ones’ is dropped and it becomes just ‘these’, ‘these ones’ is just not on.

Then of course we move to the dreaded apostrophe, and its against it’s when the later is a shortened version of it is, and the former is possessive: its body, its house.

But not as seen in East Anglia some time ago:

All Our Egg’s Are Free Range!

MERVYN BUSTON

East Road

Maidenhead

‘Topics’ column should be beyond belief

Your continued publication of the Jesus message goes on.

Jon Drake trots out the fiction today (Topic, March 29) and readers are assured such a person actually existed.

Everyone needs a physical father to perform the needful nine months before birth. Your organ might, sometimes, offer the truth instead of religious mythology.

MD Geary

Forlease Drive

Maidenhead

Editor’s note: Our ‘Topic’ section has long been a part of the Advertiser and there will always be people who believe in and agree with the messages being shared and those who don’t. We are not telling anyone what to think or believe. Viewpoint is exactly what the name suggests it is – a place for different perspectives, whether you agree with them or not.