SIR: Mrs Syms of Bishop’s Waltham, in the Chronicle letters page of September 16, is absolutely right about the need for a better system for planning meetings. I sympathise with her - she is is just the latest in a long line of residents, council tax payers and voters, who are exasperated with the apparent inability of Winchester City Council to rein in rogue developers. I applaud the Chronicle’s Freedom of Information request about the number of retrospective plans that slip through, though not the council’s lacklustre response. Nick Butler in Soberton is just the most extreme example of developers taking not the slightest notice of any legal requirements.

But then there’s also Winchester City Council, taking not the slightest notice of the legal requirements around the imminent Judicial Review on the multi-storey car park at Bar End.

As Mrs Syms says, it really is time to have a better system.

One improvement that could be made is to rethink the ‘public consultation’ at the start of council meetings. A member of the public has to say beforehand if they want three minutes to put their case before the meeting. If the matter is contentious it’s likely several people will want to make the same point, which is simply a waste of time. (Mind you, councillors also come to meetings with speeches they are determined to read out, even if the point has been made before. And they often take a lot more than three minutes.) Almost certainly councillors will already have had letters or emails expressing public dismay, so they know what to expect. They are unlikely to react in the meeting to something said immediately before. It means there’s no opportunity for a member of the public to react or even to correct what is said by the committee. What members of the public would prefer, I suspect, is to respond to what councillors have said in regard to any particular item. Long and tiresome as meetings very often are, it would be better to have the public involvement at the end of each item rather than the beginning.

Judith Martin,

Romsey Road,

Winchester