I AM sure many of your readers will share my delight at the welcome news that Okehampton and its environs is to be given a pot of cash by the Regional Development Agency.
The concept that how this money is to be spent will be a community-led issue is also to be welcomed. Let's all take a step back, look to the long term and spend this money wisely.
Recently, there has been criticism that there has been a lack of public consultation with regard to local projects. There can be little doubt that much of this criticism was justified but let's learn from those experiences and make sure that this new money goes exactly where people want it to go.
I note in your front page article on July 19 that there was to be a public meeting on the same day to discuss how the RDA money might be spent. Surely there should have been much more notice about this meeting and surely it should have been publicised much more widely than a brief mention in an article in the Okehampton Times.
It is occurrences like this that lead people to believe (rightly, in my view) that there is a lack of public consultation. yes, let's have open, public meetings, but there must be proper notice, say two to three weeks, and it must be far more widely publicised, ideally by letters through everybody's door.
This may be expensive and time-consuming but the end result, in the long-term, will be much more beneficial to the community.
I believe it is exciting times in Okehampton, the promise of a new, state of the art hospital, the ever-present hope that we will eventually get a long overdue leisure centre and developments at the excellent Okehampton Railway Station must give us all a good feeling about the future for the town.
There is one area I feel that is crying out to be developed. That is the old mill site. Here we have an historic building in a superb location just slowly decaying. it seems blindingly obvious to me that this should be the focus of any future development in town.
I am convinced that if it was developed it would draw so many more people into Okehampton.
I am sure many people have many more diverse ideas. Let's have some open, public debate and really ensure that the people get what the people want.
J Magowen
79 Station Road
Okehampton
THANK goodness we were able to learn about the Coastal and Market Towns Initiative in your front page article last week.
Why is it that anything to do with Okehampton and its development seems to start off behind closed doors? The RDA spokesman says that this was to be a real opportunity for local people to have an input in the future structure and development of their town and that anyone who is eager and enthusiastic may join, but in Okehampton that is highly unlikely, with so much money needed to fulfil existing plans.
The 'meeting' you announced seems to have involved the in-crowd, the usual suspects who were apparently busy rushing to the table to choose a steering group.
Next we'll hear that a firm of over-paid consultants will be appointed, again, to 'consult' local people for 20 minutes each with no time to think more than superficially. They'll emerge after several months with the usual sad ideas, all designed to expel visitors, clog the roads with traffic, remove short-term parking from nearby shops, scatter road humps and plant trees in paved pedestrian areas, all to impede the unwary — North Tawton and Chagford beware.
In the meantime, local ideas will be developed and an application process formed for spring is only eight months away, now. Then we will find that only the larger organisations can write suitable plans for their schemes, in fund application jargon, that can attract match funding. This may sound silly but it happens all over the country in far too many poorly planned regeneration projects.
Will the local planning process be able to delay any applications that might try to jump the gun on this process in an attempt to avoid possible disturbance by the outcome of this initiative? I hope we've had a councillor from the planning committee involved from the outset who can spot them coming.
It is time the people of the Okehampton district were consulted at the beginning of a project, so that they can help steer it and develop it. We need people who work in the area, those who successfully contribute to the economy and especially those who recognise what makes it different to other areas in the country. There are plenty around, we just don't seem to ask properly.
The Rev Barrie Duke
Goldburn Bungalow
Okehampton
l The meeting to which Mr Magowen refers was not a public meeting. It was a meeting of invited parties to discuss forming a steering group. It is understood there will be a public meeting at a later stage — Editor.