Richard Winter
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Newspaper editing - 2007/03/19 01:24
For the first time a letter that I submitted to in the Sussex Express (9th March) was edited. This shouldn't I suppose, come as a surprise, after all this is why editors are called editors. It does maybe explain why some letters read a bit oddly as this published version does. However, I feel compelled to publish the letter in full here because I think some of the force was taken out of it. I can only believe that they made the letter fit the space they had left over or alternatively, and slightly more sinisterly, they were afraid of upsetting a body of people that I criticised, namely local councillors. So here it is with the bits the Express left out in double inverted commas:
Lindsay Frost Director of Planning for Lewes District Council is reported as saying recently that 'Preparing a "Planning Vision" for the North Street area is already a complex task and I am very reluctant to make it even more complicated and lengthy by adding other sites, all of which have their own individual planning issues.'
This is disgraceful. Is he saying that planners can’t cope with the issues surrounding all the prospective developments in Lewes as a whole? So the authority is going to pick them off one at a time, implying that each one has no context outside its immediate perimeter? ""There isn’t (or shouldn’t be) such a concept as an ‘individual planning issue’ with developments on this scale. What are local plans for?""
This is what the people of Lewes are up against and why they packed the town hall ""recently"" and voted for a holistic approach to planning. Whether we should have trust in property developers was also questioned. ""It looks at the moment like we can't trust our elected representatives and their officers to drive the agenda for change. They would rather plead helplessness in the face of pressure.""
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