Ashfield Partnership failed to pay postage

WITH the Whitenap development of over 1000 homes under discussion, organisation is key but developers, Ashfield Partnership have come under fire.

The partnership who have released the masterplan outlining a whole new community, didn’t pay enough postage on their letters resulting in residents having to pick up the cost.

People who wanted a say on the plans were asked to either view online or request a hardcopy however, residents are not happy after being asked to collect their hard copies from the local post office due to insufficient paid postage.

Councillor Nick King-Adams was contacted by Kate Greatrix, a resident and member of the Romsave group to say: “I had a call from a resident today saying she called to request a hard copy of the masterplan and feedback form. She received a card from Royal Mail telling her she had to pay £1.50 as the postage had been under paid. She called and spoke to a lady who said sorry but that’s not my problem. Incidentally the feedback form was not enclosed!

“Also although hearsay another resident has told us that when they went down to the post office in Romsey to collect their letter and pay the £1.50 they were shown a pile of unclaimed letters which also had the same unpaid postage they were told that the post office have to keep. The lack of serious Consultation is being compounded by residents we know who have also been hit with the £1.50 postage charge only to find there is no feed back form inside the letter once it was delivered.

Cllr Nick King-Adams said: “I think it is fair to say that this consultation could have been better organised. It was launched last month without any prior warning to local representatives. More importantly I have been made aware of many people who have had to pay additional postage charges in order to obtain their consultation pack because they were sent out without the correct postage on them.

“I welcome the Ashfield Partnership’s informal extension of the consultation period to allow for comment from the joint Romsey Town and Extra planning committee and to take into account late submissions from residents. I very much hope they will take into account the very large number of responses from local people and the legitimate concerns they raise.”

Richard Buss, a member of Romsave, campaigning to ‘save Romsey from the developers’ told the Advertiser he had been told an elderly resident had contacted Ashfield Partnership to discuss the postage issue and was met with rudeness by a member of staff who allegedly said ‘Sorry, that’s not my problem’, and inferred they wouldn’t do anything about it, however, Richard has now been told, two first-class postage stamps have been sent out to those affected to cover their costs.

Richard also said one of Romsave’s members have asked the Ashfield Partnership 3 times to let them have printed masterplans to distribute to the elderly and those in digital poverty yet AP refused claiming they need to maintain records of who they had written to.

“We think this is a disgraceful and now dysfunctional consultation process.

“The Ashfield Partnership and their consultants have clearly discriminated against the elderly and those in digital poverty while asking them to pay a fine for the developer’s incompetence.”

Simon Coles, director for Tetra Tech Planning told the Advertiser he was aware that there had been an issue with postage despite the company having weighed and measured the envelopes. He said: “We now know that incorrect postage stamps were affixed to 33 letters to local residents, which unfortunately resulted in a Royal Mail surcharge. We thank those affected for telling us about this and we acted swiftly to remedy the situation by sending postage stamps equal to the value of the surcharge to all those affected. We regret any inconvenience caused by this genuine oversight.

“Following requests, we extended the consultation period to December 11. However, this is not a hard deadline, and we will continue to welcome comments from the community after the 11th. We thank those who have commented to date.”

The Ashfield Partnership have so far received 37 hard copy responses out of a total amount of 358. The consultation is ongoing.