Newsflash - success at 2 Pine Hill

News arrives that the owner of 2 Pine Hill on the Woodcote Estate, Mr. Neville True, has been convicted at Redhill Magistrates' Court of breaching a planning enforcement order in relation to the property.

Mr. True has made himself a nuisance to neighbours at a number of addresses around Epsom. In Pine Hill he has regularly parked over 12 vehicles on and around his property creating an eye sore and affecting his neighbours' enjoyment of their own homes. After complaints from local residents and pressure from myself the council finally agreed to issue an enforcement order to limit the number of vehicles Mr. True is allowed to keep on his land. The figure the council came to was a maximum of seven. This in my view is still much too high. Mr. True is clearly storing and trading in cars from a residential property and there is no evidence to suggest that he needs up to seven cars on the land for residential purposes. I will continue to press the council to reduce this number. Further action is required as to the parking of cars on land to the side of the property that does not appear to be covered by the original notice.

Mr. True had a pop at me in the Epsom Guardian when I dared suggest that he simply get on and tidy up his land. He denied he has committed any criminal offence and has suggested that the council is bullying him. He got a mate to write in (without disclosing their connection) to accuse me of attacking the principle of an Englishman's home being his castle.

Well Mr. True's protestations don't come to much now that he has entered a guilty plea. Just to be clear, as a Conservative, I am a great fan of property rights. This does though include the rights of others to enjoy their properties and not to have to suffer at the hands of inconsiderate and selfish people like Mr. True.

Mr. True's lack of neighbourliness has cost him dearly. He now has a criminal conviction. He is to pay a £2,000 fine and £600 costs. One has to hope that he has learnt his lesson. If he hasn't I fear he may find this all a rather costly business because if he persists with his actions I will ensure that we will go back to court as many times as is necessary for him to learn the error of his ways.

Leave us free to tweet!

Senior RA councillors have made complaints to the Chief Executive about councillors tweeting from council meetings. It seems that these fuddy duddies find such activity "disruptive". Twitter is a useful social networking and micro-blogging tool that a number of opposition councillors, including myself, use.

As one of the councillors who tweets from meetings I cannot see anything objectionable about it. I use twitter to alert my followers to what is happening on the council. Given, unlike other authorities such as Surrey, Epsom & Ewell don't webcast their meetings I imagine this is useful to local residents who can't make it to meetings themselves. Why would we won't to deprive local residents of this sort of information? Unless the RAs don't want what takes place in meetings advertised which is understandable given some of their awful policy decisions recently.

In any event the Chief Executive seems much more up to date and open than certain crusty RA councillors and has even suggested that a council officer could tweet from council meetings. Hurrah for her! Three cheers for all of those who seek to defend the right to tweet.

And if you want to follow me on twitter just go to the side bar on this page and follow the link.

Last chance for public loos

An extraordinary meeting of the council has been called for this evening in a last ditch attempt to reopen our borough's public toilets.

I am proposing the motion and am hoping that a number of RA members have realised what a terrible mistake it was to close these three facilities across the borough.

It disturbs me that there is still waste and inefficiency present within the council's budget and yet instead of tackling this the RAs chose to cut important services to the public. Unfortunately first indications are that the leadership of the RA group of councillors is going to oppose my motion. Cllr Robert Leach has misleadingly suggested that one of the sites is no longer owned by the council. What he doesn't make clear is that the council had not owned it for a number of years, council officers having neglected to renew the lease, but that the legal owners have absolutely no problem with the site being leased at a peppercorn rent for the purpose of being run as a public toilet.

Cllr Jean Smith has sought to dismiss the strength of public feeling on this issue. She has suggested on local radio that that the 130 people who attended the public demonstration at the Stoneleigh public toilets (pictured above) were in fact not local but instead "bussed in" by local political parties. This has been described as a "pack of lies" by the local RA ward chairman. It's unfortunate that instead of dealing with the merits of the argument for public conveniences within the borough these councillors seek to mislead so as to protect their position.

Tonight's vote will be very close and I very much hope that, just as they did with their opposition to granting our local regiment the freedom of the borough, that RA will admit their mistake and do a u-turn. It is important that tonight they represent the interests of their residents and not the interests of the RA group of councillors.