ONE of the most frustrating things about being a local councillor is when a decision gets made on a local issue and everyone locally knows it is wrong but they don’t get listened to, writes Lib Dem county councillor Neil Fawcett.

One example of this was in December, when the Conservative members of the county council cabinet voted unanimously to move the well used pedestrian crossing in Marcham Road in Abingdon. This was despite hundreds of local residents telling them that the new site would be less safe.

The county council had not done an assessment of whether the current site was safer than the new site, nor had they done a proper assessment of the wider traffic impact.

But ‘the experts’ said it was OK, so what do local residents know?

The Conservative-run Vale of White Horse District Council, working with its developer partners, tried to impose a completely unacceptable redevelopment scheme on the people of Botley, causing two years of blight, stress and worry.

Thankfully the planning committee, after two years of strong campaigning by local residents, businesses and the local Lib Dem team, voted down the proposals.

One victory for common sense at least.

But just a week later we saw accountability go out of the window when the Conservative councillors running the Vale refused to answer questions from councillors, submitted in advance, about the West Way redevelopment in Botley, their plans to build thousands of houses on the Green Belt and other key issues.

We’ve seen the same in Oxford, where the Labour City Council dismantled the system that allowed ward councillors and local residents to have a meaningful say over local planning decisions.

The result? The Castle Mill student flats that now dominate the Port Meadow skyline.

And across the whole county the Green Belt is being eaten away piecemeal because council leaders got together in a room and came up with figures that apparently mean the number of houses in Oxfordshire needs to increase by 40 per cent in 15 years.

So while most people accept that we do need a lot more housing, and that too many people are now priced out of the local housing market, the solution being offered simply doesn’t have any credibility. Overall there is a growing sense that our local communities are having things done to them, but with little opportunity for people to have any real influence.

The answer is for local councils, and the councillors running them, to start to listen, and to be seen to act on the feedback they get. Sometimes, when they’ve clearly got it wrong, they need to find the courage to back down.

As far as their house-building plans are concerned, if they can’t explain in simple and credible terms how that number of houses can be built, they need to go back to the drawing board and start again.

Telling local residents that ‘the experts’ know best simply won’t wash when the advice of those same experts has been wrong so often in the past.