NTC publish the hydrogeologicalreports: http://www.newbury.gov.uk/foi-2000.php

Wow, great work Simon!

I don't understand it.

LOL - Have you read it yet Simon; what does it mean? I read lots of 'most likely' and 'lack of mitigation'. Perhaps WBC's EA feel a bit awkward for not ensuring safe dewatering?


The trouble is; what do we moan about now, now that you've ruined NTC's park recovery strategy? And now NTC are gonna get their ar$$e$ sued and pump everyone's council tax up!

Don't worry Petra will be along shortly to inform us plebs what it means!

Dear Mr Capp,

1. I am glad it is clear now.
2. You may say unbiased judgement, I question it. How do you know they don’t have their own agenda? After all, they are just ordinary people, albeit professional people, but with an agenda.
3. I understand how it is ridiculous coming from you and those that are hostile to councils, but to others they would disagree.
4. My arguments are incoherent to you, which I understand, however, to those around me and to a more intelligent mind it is very coherent. Didn’t you put up on this forum that you wished to get back to criticizing WBC? That answers your question in a nutshell.
5. I thought this was pretty obvious. By releasing it and being read wrongly, it could affect how the public see them and also open themselves up to every crank out there. Then there is the litigation angle. Maybe I shouldn’t say this, but whatever business I worked for, it was always a policy to “deny everything. It is up to the challengers to prove their case and then challenge.”

Yours,
Petra.

But it isn't and still isn't


They are learned people, but I wager that their 'agenda' is likely to be more balanced than that of an entity that wishes to pursue a hidden one. However, if you have evidence, lets see it. Show me how you can justify a cynical stance on their judgement?


Only if they wish to pursue an unjustifiable stance; however, agreeing or disagreeing isn't the issue: it is what is reasonable, and the council's actions, had they chose that route, would have been unjustifiable when measured by 'common sense'.


You obviously don't recognise satire or irony when you read it (don't worry, I recognise trolling when I see it, but this is fun!). However, your arguments remain incoherent as you offer no supplementary ideas other than to contradict and as the old comedy sketch goes: "this isn't an argument; it's just contradiction". I have no doubt you are not thick, but the problem is it takes a lot of imagination to defend the indefensible and you don't seem to show much of that.


How is that an issue? I doubt few people will be motivated to do anything ridiculous; no more ridiculous than building a multi-story development and underground car park in a marsh, anyway.


This shows your ignorance of the judgement. NTC were not defending anything litigious; they were just judged to have behaved unnecessarily. Perhaps now things are in the open the council may be free to explain themselves.




I wonder of anyone is wishing they'd just let Simon have his allotment back, yet?

On a more serious note: now what? we are left with a broken park and ~£100k bill to add to the remedial works bill.

In my view, and has always been the case, I feel it is WBC that have let people down. It is they that bent over backwards to get this development built and it is they that failed to supervise the works properly when the dewatering was requested.

Well, it was an awful lot of effort to get it, but fair play to the Council for not stringing it out to the bitter end.

Both the report and the addendum which have now been published by NTC doesn’t seem to be at all contentious so goodness knows why they were so keen to hold onto it. I have read every word from beginning to end and as far as I can tell, the key to the whole problem can be summarised by the water level in the bowling green sump which has never dried out in the past due to lack of rainfall and it was only when the dewatering began that it totally dried to below the base level.
There has to be some blame on the result held by the Environment Agency who licensed the abstraction. A key point is that although a proportion of the pumped water from the bunded and piled area was recharged back into purpose built wells, they were all on the western side of the development and none on the Victoria Park side. That is a serious omission in my opinion by the EA who would have responsibility that the design by the developers would not impact on the area.
.
The final report conclusion was…..

The lack of mitigation(by the Parkway development) along the side nearest the park, plus the fact that the abstractions are large, in the order of 12.1Ml/d make this the most likely explanation for the majority of the lowering of ground water levels and the ground disturbance seen within Victoria Park during 2010.

It also says that the majority of the collated data was from public sources.
What should the council do to attempt to resolve the dilemma. I suspect Costain have offered two fingers but they have to some extent admitted liability by putting water back to the bowling green….

But what was the reason for all the secrecy?
As expected the de-watering is found probably to be the cause of the cracking and look at how much that has cost the precept payers.
To quote our dear Petra it should have been left to the professionals! But alas it would seem that those same professionals who gave permission for the development and the de-watering are not so professional after all?

That's how I read it. It was perverse ever to want to keep such an anodyne report secret, and bat-shit crazy to expend all that public money preventing publication. All it did was alienate the trust of the townspeople.

Well, the good news is that publication has not damaged NTC's chances of successful litigation. The bad news is that their case isn't obviously as "robust" as we've been led to believe. Publication of the reports might yet encourage an honest debate about the way forward, and if throwing the towel in and writing off that £100k we've already spent is the prudent thing to do then lets do it and move on.

However, it's apparent to everyone from the Tribunal's frank criticism that the Council's grasp of the legal process is, well, bizarre. It's going to be impossible to trust the Council's judgement on this or anything else until the cause for that failure is completely understood and clearly addressed. The Leader of the Council needs to consider his position.

As for the cost - m'eh! Over the five years of the dispute that's only £20k a year, or less than 2p per week on the council tax. We spend ten times that every year on the pomp of the mayor, the allotments, the Gothic town hall, and the moribund market, so better fix that first before we worry about the marginal waste of inept administration.

More important still is that we fix the appalling dysfunctional culture at the Council, because until we do that we'll just have one snafu after another.

That's how I see it. From my humble view and from the information I have read, the developers can hardly be blamed for doing that which they obtained a licence to do!

So, why did the council keep investing in more legal fees? Perhaps it was vanity and arrogance; they felt it would look good on their CV if they could persuade the developer to hand over some dosh for remedial work?

West Berkshire Council, meanwhile, have been totally schtum on all this. I even remember Richard Benyon pitched in early in the project about how he would lend a weight to get some remedial action (not verbatim). It seems he might have read the report shortly after that statement too.

Petra said they will though and that they will probably have the judgement over ruled.

Wait a minute though, it's been done hasn't it?

Simon, could Petra be wrong? She's the most intelligent person on the planet though, and despite being unable to offer contradictory evidence to support an argument, unable to type, proof read or use a spell checker, she still maintains that.

Maybe she meant a different report...

Petra? Naaah, brain the size of a planet. Obviously a superior being, possibly even pan dimensional.

Frightening!

Congratulations goes to Simon Kirby and Mark Knight for never succumbing to the barriers that they faced for such a long time to reveal the reports that should never have been hidden from public view.

This success could if pressed home lead to further questions that have been fudged by the leadership of Newbury Town Council finally being answered.

I have to say that both Simon and Mark would have made genuinely excellent Liberal Democrat candidates, but my parties loss is the Apoliticals gain.

Yours,

Ruwan Uduwerage-Perera
Liberal Democrat 'whistleblower'

I only pass by for a yearly Newt....
My vote is for SK ,MK & CF.
I am stuffed here with Guardian folk.
ce

I think..SOLACE. has a lot to answer for.
ce

And MM as well