I refer to the letter from the 'Caring Grandmother' Chatteris and Emma Mason's report of Fenland Council's rejection of plans for a Chatteris superstore.
I wholeheartedly agree that Chatteris needs a leisure centre and, like most residents, consider the failure of local authority to provide adequate leisure facilities is deplorable.
The planning application for the supermarket is of course not dire
ctly related and came from a commercial organisation.
But the subjects are linked as they are both examples of the residents of Chatteris being let down by Fenland District Council.
There is, in fact, very little resident opposition to the superstore proposal.
Very many people would have welcomed both the store and the shuttle-bus that the developers proposed 'laying on' - a bus which could have provided residents with a valuable link not only to the store itself but also into the Chatteris town centre.
FDC appears to me to have wildly missed the mark in refusing the application and let escape both a fine opportunity to improve the local economy of Chatteris and the possibility of 'planning gain' in the form of some much-needed road improvements –which could quite reasonably have been demanded as part of the planning consent.
Chatteris residents are not happy to have to continue waiting for a superstore and there is long-established mass discontent at the continued absence of a leisure centre.
CHRISTINE COLBERT
(Chatteris Town councillor).
