Congratulations to the Beacon and your reporter Desmond Pugh (First Glimpse at Plans for Agincourt Square, Beacon 19th June 2019) for knowing more about a planned £0.5 million investment of public money on Agincourt Square, Monmouth, than the town council either knows or is willing to tell the public.

At a full Town Council meeting of 24th June, under an agenda item called “Public Participation”, I asked the council two questions.

First, why details of the scheme had apparently been finalised without calling a meeting of a Joint Working Group of residents, community groups, traders, town and county councillors that had been assembling details of a scheme for the last three years, in readiness for wider consultation with residents and traders in the town.

Second, whether any town councillors had met secretly with county officers, to finalise all the details of the scheme before announcing it to the public and if so with what result?

Town mayor and county councillor, Richard Roden, simply replied that the council “would respond in due course”, quoting the council’s standing orders that say that “a question shall not require a response at the meeting nor start a debate on the question”.

Town councillor Kelly Jackson-Graham asked that at least councillors themselves should hear a reply to the same questions. The answer was no, the same standing order will apply to them.

It would seem that not only the public but councillors are excluded from participation in council business. That just leaves the rest of us, who pay for all this, on the outside of this closed shop.

David Farnsworth (Trellech)