If you have been watching the Llanbedr Bypass planning application page on the Snowdonia National Park Authority (SNPA) web site very carefully, you just might have noticed that the 136 documents listed there when Gwynedd Council’s application was registered a couple of weeks ago has now swollen to one-hundred-and -forty. Among the new arrivals is Llanbedr Community Council’s comments on the bypass, which are of course, likely to influence the final decision. Community council comments can be pretty important on these occasions.

Now one might have expected that our council would have posted a copy of this rather important document on their web site. After all they do have a page misleadingly called ‘New Road’ when everyone knows that what they are really talking about is actually a bypass that will change Llanbedr forever, but they dare not say so. If they had done that, everyone would be able to see what is being said on their behalf without rummaging through 140 documents on an obscure website.

A community council is required to represent all shades of opinion in the area they cover. So many people might be rather surprised that such a document has been drawn up and submitted to the planners without a series of public meetings to establish what people think. That would also have been a useful exercise because the council would have been able to benefit from the varied views, experience, and expertise in the community which extends beyond that of the elected members. Or perhaps it might have been a good idea to publish the comment on the website in draft form before it was sent to the planners, just to see what people thought of it and whether it could be improved.

In fact a request for a public meeting before the council’s comments were sent to the planners was made by a householder who is concerned about the bypass. This was refused:  something else that people might find very, very strange.

So it is rather sad that, Continue reading “Llanbedr Community Council on the Fence” →