Question (from me)

The Cabinet has promised to take care of my interests across the Vale with enterprise, energy and efficiency. I don’t know what they mean by ‘enterprise’. ‘Energy’ isn’t enough if it doesn’t produce a good result. Tonight I’m interested in ‘efficiency’. Could the Cabinet member please report the total costs so far to create the emerging Local Plan? Please include all costs: officers, consultants, travel & food, phone calls, consultation, printing and distribution, and everything else that we have invested so far in producing our emerging Local Plan.

Answer

The cost of production of the Local Plan consumes almost all of the Vale’s diligent and hard working planning policy team’s financial budget, and for the last 3 years this has been £3,214,174 in total.

(Well, is that what I asked? I don’t think so. Work on the Local Plan has been going on at least since the 2011 elections. Before that was before my time, so who knows. The past three years mostly was spent waiting for the Examination and responding to inspectors questions. I expect the real answer would be more than twice what he’s supplied. Next stop: Finance department.)