Conservative councillors will not be able to offer their own views on the future of the Friarsgate redevelopment at a meeting next week – even though it is being held in private.
The scheme is seemingly on the brink of collapse after private funding failed to materialise and an 11th hour plan to rescue it with a £49million investment from the public purse was rejected by Lichfield District Council’s Cabinet after it emerged Tory councillors were unlikely to back it at a full vote.
A meeting of the council on June 26 is now likely to see the axe finally fall on Friarsgate.
But a number of Conservative sources have revealed to LichfieldLive that the party whip will mean no councillors from the blue side of the chamber will speak on the issue at the meeting or vote independently, meaning Cllr Mike Wilcox, leader of the council, is likely to read the last rites for the redevelopment scheme alone.
However, Labour and Lib Dem councillors will still have the opportunity to question the local authority’s leadership on recent events and a confidential report during the session.
Cllr Wilcox has not replied to a request for comment from LichfieldLive, but Labour opposition group leader, Cllr Sue Woodward, said silencing councillors was not the right way forward for the local authority’s leadership having kept the public in the dark about the debate so far.
“I really hope it isn’t the case,” she said. “We’re not North Korea, for goodness sake, though it’s beginning to feel like it.
“In the absence of open, public debate, it’s important that councillors take the opportunity to question the reasons behind the recommendations that we are going to be voting on and make sure we are actively representing our electors. That’s what representative democracy is all about.”
Cllr Woodward said that the lack of exterior examination on the impending collapse of the Friarsgate scheme was “an abuse of democracy”.
“I had wanted to call in part of the report – which we still can’t talk about – for further scrutiny but was told that the council meeting on Tuesday would allow just that,” she said. “The Labour group will certainly be using the council meeting to ask searching questions, as we always do.
“If it is going to be just a nodding through exercise with Tory councillors being gagged, even in private now, this is just another failure of leadership.
“What a complete farce – what an abuse of democracy.”
