Last Thursday the council's regulatory committee voted through the South of Marske New Town proposal.
I presented 40 plus legal and regulatory points but we lost on a split decision 6:4.
The councillors who voted for the development did so as they follow officer recommendations. They have lost all reason of why they are on the council. Unless part of the cabinet, the role of the councillor is scrutiny.
Scrutiny was absent from the regulatory committee.
I could run through the 40 points and the errors in the plan's engineering reports. The bad maths and the deliberate false figures.
However, what's the point?
The six councillors backed a sniggering officer.
Cllr Thompson proposed an out of the room meeting and the chair Cllr Smith, a former police officer with a shaved head and of around 14 stone, accused a 10.5 stone former athlete and a group of pensioners of bullying him.
It was disgraceful.
Now the local taxpayer has a £2,000,000 bill for costs externalised by the developer. Every buyer on the site will pay £3000 per year energy costs and bills to a management company. The developer even fooled the councillors into 2022 regs by quoting carbon reductions of a new boiler compared to an old one (like they would fit an old boiler otherwise?!). Oh 31% carbon reduction! The same 31% that was already quoted in a corrupted energy report at page 31. The same story big money rolled over to yet again forcing the majority into a bad deal.
Are these councillors the best we can find to be selected and elected?
What about their 2030 carbon neutral promise? Just words.
So the West Midlands Pension Fund makes a mint, billionaire backed developers clean up, Marske loses its uniqueness, 56,000+ tonnes of carbon goes into the air for eternity, and we in Redcar and Cleveland are all worse off.
There are six councillors that can't keep a climate promise on Redcar and Cleveland Council.
In politics keeping a promise is everything.