I am a TLRA member but (to my shame) I have never been active. However, the unpleasantness on this forum has spurred me to decide I should do more.
I understand that TLRA was set up 51 years ago to look after the interests of the residents on the estate.
Fury against TLRA has now been expressed. Why? TLRA seems to me to have done exactly what it was set up to do. It received a large number of objections to the nursery from residents and none from supporters -- so it supported the objectors.
What has TLRA done wrong?
There is also anger that TLRA did not consult everyone on the estate. But, in the 8 years I have lived here, I have never been consulted about any of the cases where TLRA was opposing planning applications. Why should Westwood Park residents be consulted about things happening in Liphook – and vice versa?
We need to be consulted about things that concern us directly, not those several roads away. Obviously TLRA parents who use the nursery are directly concerned, but it was the responsibility of the nursery to inform them that they had been given places in a set-up which did not comply with the existing law, not TLRA’s -first to find out who they were and then consult their opinions. Why did those parents not lobby TLRA at the planning stage? (I realise the covenant was brought in later, but everyone must have known about the planning application, which was heard long after the nursery opened.)
I can well understand that parents are angry that their nursery has decided to close (at the moment there is no court order to close it.) Of course it is deeply upsetting for parents and children to lose a place where they are happy and settled.
But why direct this anger at the TLRA committee, who have acted exactly in accordance with their remit?
Let us also remember that the committee, and the road reps, are all volunteers who must spend huge amounts of unpaid time in organising and delivering things for the benefit of the community on the hill.
I, for one, am very grateful to them.
Surely the people who have caused all this are the people who set up a business and offered places in a nursery without doing the basic checks that any sane person would do.
Not the TLRA committee.