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Oxfordshire Liberal DemocratsOxfordshire County Council Liberal Democrat Group |
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South East Regional Assembly - letter to Oxford Mail
November 25, 2006 12:00 AM
In your editorial (Oxford Mail, November 16), you ask if the South East England Regional Assembly (Seera) ceased to exist, whether anyone would notice.
I believe that they would.
This is because, for better or for worse, Seera is an integral part of the planning system. Through its planning committee, alongside local plans, it allocates the numbers of houses to be built, and where they might be built.
Imperfect as Seera is, I do not believe that any sane person wants planning by appeal or any other sort of anarchy in the planning system.
It is this, I believe, that absorbs the bulk of the money.
It is also worth remembering that Seera was originally set up to provide some sort of democratic oversight over the development agency, Seeda.
It was a grant of some £6m from that source which made the much-praised Castle regeneration project in Oxford stack up financially.
If that had not happened, the whole of Oxfordshire would have been that much poorer, and a derelict site would have remained.
Some of us would like to see a democratically elected assembly of some kind, but that is another complex topic.
Cllr Bob Johnston
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