Ledbury Portal Community Forum

It appears the Ledbury Reporter has run into the same problem as the Ledbury Community Portal - Herefordshire Council ignorance.

According to today's Ledbury Reporter (4/6/10): "These concerns [about the new library build] have been met with silence by Herefordshire Council. The authority was contacted by the Ledbury Reporter on Wednesday morning but had failed to issue a response at the time of going to press."

The Ledbury Community Portal asked these same questions to Herefordshire Council over a month ago, and has been met by the same wall of silence.

It is astonishing that last year's Council propaganda machine was releasing a media torrent - one story after another and promising Ledbury an extraordinary showcase library. Now nothing, nada, zilch.

At the time of the changed proposals to the library build, I pointed out on the Ledbury Community Portal that library attendance both in the town and across the country was on a constant downward trend - people aren't going to libraries anymore. The Council's response was that it would be more than a library - it would be an internet cafe as well!

I reminded the council that during the initial consultation phases of the library build, Ledbury businesses were promised that nothing in the library build would be in competition to existing Ledbury businesses and that Ledbury already had an Internet cafe.

The Council's response? To since then ignore the Ledbury Community Portal.

After dealing with Herefordshire Council I can understand only too well why the new government will be cutting public services.

They have a press office that won't deal with the press. They have an information shop that only selectively releases information. They have two managers in an office with one worker on the phone taking information requests and logging them onto a system to be ignored. What are the managers doing? "Don't know" says the worker.

Perhaps Herefordshire Council should rename themselves - The Council of Propaganda and Specific Ignorance.