THIS week’s controversial planning committee meeting at Gedling Borough Council has taken a new twist with the release of information from dumbles.co.uk which reveals attempts from within the council’s offices to influence opinion.
This website has covered the proposed crematorium and cemetery developments from Bristol-based company Westerleigh and local firm AW Lymn for over a year. Our most recent story, on 30 April 2013, was the target of what appears to be a concerted campaign to win over public opinion on the planning application. That application goes to the planning committee meeting tomorrow, 8 May 2013.
In the space of six minutes last Wednesday morning, three separate comments were left on this story, each apparently from a different named individual and each using a different return email address. The language of all three comments was remarkably similar, speaking in favour of the development (opening with “great news”; “Fantastic news!”; and “This is great news”).
Details redacted to protect identities, but IP address, similarity of comments, and near-simultaneous timing indicate a coordinated campaign in favour of the development
One of the comments was signed from an email address @gedling.gov.uk, but all three can be traced back to Gedling Borough Council’s computer network. Each has the tell-tale IP address of Gedling’s outgoing mail server, 213.106.243.114.
What this means is that all three messages were sent from Gedling Borough Council offices, between 9.41 and 9.47am on Wednesday 1 May 2013.
dumbles.co.uk has contacted each of the email addresses used (one Gedling email, one Hotmail, and one Yahoo) seeking clarification of the individual’s role in the planning application and the planning process. To date, two responses have been received. One stated that they work in administration at a Gedling department (not planning), and had no involvement with the proposed crematorium. Another issued a similar comment stating they had no involvement with the development or the planning department but thet they are a local resident in favour of the proposal.
These responses arrived within four minutes of each other, following dumbles.co.uk’s enquiries of Gedling Borough’s communications department about its policies regarding staff use of council facilities to attempt to influence opinion over Gedling planning decisions.