MEETING REGARDS THE PIER

Last night saw an informal meeting of the Town Council and Steve Hunt, the owner of Victoria Pier, the meeting was marred by the absence of our County Councillor members who, I believe, had been advised not to attend, who gave them this advice and why I do not know. As Councillors they have a duty to their constituents to be their eyes and ears, any information gained from the meeting is now lost to the members of their communities.
Steve Hunt and the County Council were both invited to give their separate accounts of the situation regarding the Pier, the County Council declined to speak to the Town Council but Mr Hunt agreed and gave us his version of events. He started off by telling us that on Tuesday of this week the Council were ordered by Conwy County Court to pay Bailiff costs incurred when Mr Hunt had to send Court Bailiffs into the Council Offices to collect Costs awarded to him against the Council, although a trivial matter we must remember that all these cost and findings against the Council are coming out of the tax-payer’s pocket.
By all accounts Mr Hunt has already won Court cases against the Council in matters regarding the Pier, the Council even being ordered to release documentation sent between them and their legal representatives. The version we heard was, of course, only one side of the story but the one underlining factor that came out of it was the reluctance on behalf of the Council to enter into mediation with Mr Hunt, the Council totally refuse to talk to him or his representatives about the entire matter. Mr Hunt is prepared to discuss such things as selling the Pier, working with a Trust and/ or the Council, in fact he only really wishes to see the future of the Pier safeguarded. The reluctance of the Council is, somewhat, perplexing; they appear to be behaving like ostriches and hope that by ignoring it the problem will go away when, in honesty, it wont, it will only get worse. We, as a Town Council are very limited in what we can do, it was agreed that all we can do is add to the agenda of our next formal meeting a motion urging the County Council to enter into talks with Mr Hunt to try and resolve this current situation that is of their making. I only wish we could do something more stronger and positive because the longer this goes on the worse the condition of the Pier becomes; that may well be the Council’s intentions, if they wait long enough the Pier will collapse and that’s the end of their problem!.