Why such secrecy about Hungate? (From York Press)

Why such secrecy about Hungate?

11:28am Friday 6th June 2008

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Having been concerned about the design of the new Council HQ at Hungate, some weeks ago I started to ask for copies of the comments sent to the council by York Civic Trust, English Heritage, and the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment (CABE).

Getting a reply and getting access to the documents proved much more difficult than it ought. Ignored emails and brush-off anodyne responses continued for weeks. Eventually I got so brassed-off that I lodged a formal request for the documents under the freedom of Information Act. The Press covered the story here.

It really shouldn't come to this - that an elected Councillor should have to resort to use the FoI legislation to view the correspondence between City of York Council and the statutory bodies advising on the development of the new HQ.

The Council's obsession with secrecy has long troubled me and it just makes the general public feel that it has something to hide... even if it hasn't. Transparency gives people some confidence in the Council's decision-making. That confidence is currently absent and the reason is partly due to the climate of secrecy which has still to be broken down.

Anyway, in a late meeting on Friday I was finally promised sight of the CABE report which I have been seeking. That's good news, but I just feel that this aggrovation could have been avoided with a little more openness.

What was it Mikhail Gorbachev called it? Glasnost?!