Yesterday, it was full council at West Suffolk Council. A full agenda including the approval of the Local Plan which sets out where housing will be built across West Suffolk for the next 10 years.

Before things got going I managed to ask the Labour Leader of the Council about the lack of progress in providing a much needed town centre car park for Clare. The plan is to replace the social club building with a new one and push it further back on the plot. This will provide car parking spaces that will be charged for as they currently are in the country park. The revenue was sufficient to pay for day to day costs and leave some over to fund the social club building.

Then the car park gods turned against me. Some regulation has changed making all parking spaces bigger to take into account our bigger cars. This reduces the number of possible slots and consequently the revenue. We are now in the position of a car park will pay for itself on a day to day basis but there isn’t enough over to fund the new building.

We have a location, broad agreement on what needs to be done and some but not all of the money in the West Suffolk Council budget.

What I am seeking is a fair share of capital for Clare from West Suffolk Council’s capital budget of approx £0.5m. Clare does not ask for much and regularly sees huge capital expenditures elsewhere across thdistrict.

Unfortunately, the current leadership of West Suffolk Council does not seem to have the same enthusiasm for the car park as I do. So I asked the question at full council.