HAVE I, as the resident of a village eight miles from Malton, the democratic right to debate a matter many who live in the town, and some of their local town and district councillors, consider of overwhelmingly substantive relevance and concern to them?

Because the matter in question comprises important decisions for Ryedale District Council, and those decisions will affect the future financial resources of the council – the council, ergo their taxpayers, have every right to be involved, to resolve it in a manner most beneficial to the public purse – something that, legally, must always be to the fore in their considerations.

How a council and its committees are constituted is for the district’s elected representatives to decide: as far as I understand, democratically decided committee memberships discuss and reach their conclusions on a wide agenda of subjects across the whole district: they will not be made up only of members for a particular area or place under discussion. To change that system would, in effect, undermine impartial consensual council decisions.

I am alluding, of course, to the sale of Malton’s Wentworth Street car park, worth a current offer of £5m to the district‘s taxpayers, a very substantial sum in times of local government funding cuts.

This is a factor of importance, and not a side issue to be subsumed by whether or not Malton should have an up-market or a down-market supermarket, or all the theoretical and hypothetical ramifications of this. What is certain is that Malton’s population is going to grow by maybe 25 to 30 per cent in the next few years – with private development and its educational, social and infra-structural spin-offs seeking back-up from the district council’s taxpayers. They, in turn, should expect some quid, pro, quo.

There does seem to a be a perceptible mood in some areas for a Malton and Norton move to an autonomous budgetary and planning urban authority. In future years this may well come to pass. If it does, may a democratically-elected body preside well over a town (towns) which could well have to face controversial future planning demands, on its own. And fairly.

Edward Raine, East Heslerton