THE OFFICIAL ENGAGEMENT

CWACAs (or Cheshire West and Chester Authority for those of you that missed yesterday’s rant) want to ‘engage’ the community in the planning process.  To tempt us, they’re going to make everything transparent and have promised to use ‘plain English’ so that we can understand what they’re on about.  Accordingly, the draft Statement of Community Involvement refers to a document trail of AAs, AAPs, AMRs, DPDs, LAAs, LDDs, LDFs, LDSs, LSPs, PPGs, PPSs, RSSs, SAs, SCSs, SEAs and SPDs, and makes esoteric references to 4NW, BMEs, CLG, DCLG, DEFRA (that’s an easy one), GONW, LPAs, LSPs, PACT, NGOs, PINS, RPB, RTPI, SCIs, SEEN, UNECE and VCFS.  Does that make you want to get involved?  I can’t wait now that I’ve worked out that AA stands for Acronyms and Abbreviations.

CWACAs is at least trying to be fair and wants to ‘engage right across the community’.  In case this isn’t clear (or transparent or engaging enough or whatever), the statement is qualified as ‘regardless of age, gender, religious values, sex, ability, ethnicity or background’ and of whether the engagees are ‘children or young people, people in the rural area, the elderly and infirm or part of an ethnic-minority group’.  It occurs to me that CWACAs must intend at least to exclude atheists because they can’t be described as having any form of religious values.

It goes without saying that CWACA’s communications are going to be ‘jargon free’.  So, unless there’s a whole group of immortals out there, who isn’t a ‘time-limited individual’ then?  Don’t answer because my favourite is  ‘consultation fatigue’.  Poor little ducks (but they’ve only got themselves to blame).

Theoghinus Nuttors, 15 February 2009.