A resident, canvassing opinions last weekend about the possible closure of St Clement’s car park. told councillors that about 90 per cent of the people he spoke with expressed cynical and negative views about Oxford City Council.

He wrote that he encountered a range of opinions from “corrupt”, “they don’t listen to us/council taxpayers/ taxpayers”, “don’t waste your time, it’s a done deal, whatever you do they’ll go ahead anyway”.

Wednesday’s development control committee meeting on the renewed application for the Westgate Shopping Centre might have confirmed some of these attitudes.

We heard a very restrained and cogent objection from residents of Tennyson Place, whose homes would be right in the heart of the proposed development.

They had just been advised that they should be prepared to keep their windows closed because of concerns about noise and pollution from the 172 buses an hour stopping at the 15 bus stops and the estimated 90 extra delivery lorries a day that would serve the new centre.

At the first Westgate hearing, I noticed that the estimated levels of the cancer-causing nitrogen dioxide for Norfolk and Castle streets would be above government advisory levels.

We needed, at this week’s planning meeting, to discuss how much these toxic levels would be reduced by the proposed Low Emissions Zone, how the absolutely massive basement areas below the whole of the car park, Thames Square and the John Lewis store would affect the groundwater levels, given the new flood guidance, and how bringing in so many new shops in the looming recession would affect our present City Centre shops.

John Tanner came in late to the meeting as a substitute for another Labour councillor, quite possibly hadn’t managed at that late stage to read fully the complicated 229-page report, and moved that we proceed directly to a vote without any discussion of these matters.

He summed up with a facile attack on Elise Benjamin and myself as “not liking shops” and made sure there was no measured discussion of these important matters for the well being of our city.

The meeting really was a travesty of the planning process.

I wonder if this is the sort of attitude our Labour administration welcomes as it disempowers people and reduces dissent.

Nuala Young Green councillor St Clement’s ward Oxford