Lib Dems welcome car parking decision in Ely

IT is really good news for residents of Ely and the surrounding villages that Councillor Mokes and his group on East Cambridgeshire District Council have decided to drop any intention of introducing car park charging. For the time being at least.

This has been an issue I and my colleagues in the Liberal Democrat Group have been opposed to since it was first placed before committee last year and continually argued against at every opportunity.

What is amazing however, is the prominence some Tory councillors have been given in the media that by association they are in some way instrumental in this U-turn when it was, in reality, nothing of the kind.

Of the gang of four pictured on the front page, I cannot recollect either of them bar one voicing any challenge when the subject was discussed at council meetings.

Your readers would do well to remember that Cllrs. Bailley, Rouse and Griffin- Singh were effectively barred by their leader from participating in any of the Council’s committees in May 2012. None of them had the courage to express their views in the media and had Cllr. Rouse not won a reprieve from his cronies, even he would have been effectively neutered.

Indeed, from the amount of correspondence in the press, it would be more accurate to report that Cllrs. Hunt and Bailley have had more vocal involvement in trying to ensure McCarthy and Stone do not develop the Croylands site adjacent to Cllr. Hunt’s house on Cambridge Road than they ever did with car parking charges.

CLLR NEIL MORRISON

Deputy Leader

Lib. Dem. Group

East Cambridgeshire District Council