AS a small businessman I must live in a different world to the chairman of Macclesfield Borough Council's planning committee.

I live on the borders of three local borough councils - Vale Royal, Congleton and Macclesfield.

Yet their planning policies are entirely different which suggests there is some flexibility in planning laws.

I was forced to planning appeal, at great expense to me and my business, which I won.

But I still feel aggrieved at the treatment I received from Macclesfield's planning department.

As I am accountable for my actions, I believe the planning committee, if they go against their own officers' advice and are proved wrong, should be personally surcharged for their mistake - not the taxpayers.

By the same token, if the planning officer gives the committee wrong advice then he should be held accountable and the costs of his blunder should come out of his budget.

The planning committee spent an hour of taxpayers' money in committee discussing my inheritance tax liability. And I'm not dead yet!

They also employed an outside firm to check my financial status at great expense to the council taxpayers of Macclesfield.

What I want to know is does the planning committee make all other proposals, from companies such as Monckton Properties, jump through similar hoops?

We all know that Knutsford has been stitched up over the years by big business, against the interest of small traders and the inhabitants of Knutsford.

We will believe the new library when we get it, with or without strings attached.

In answer to Clr Jan Verney, we did have an Independent councillor at one time, Clr Ken Whalley, the local veterinary surgeon who had it rough from time to time.

I doubt if we will ever get our own truly independent councillors, as I myself stood for the Plumley ward in 1984 as an Independent Ratepayer.

As I was canvassing on my own around the villages, I was approached by a large vehicle with a bull bar on the front which tried to run me off the road, a villager who lived in a tied cottage was told to take down my poster or get out of the cottage, this is the fanatical party politics we have to endure.

So when a man in a white suit stood up for the oppressed of Tatton, I could not believe our luck.

When we had the 'battle of the heath' it all ran true to form.

Martin Bell won because the people of Tatton had had enough of the sticky fingers of politics.

May I suggest you look a little harder at your department, who knows, you may find a viper in the nest.

REG LAWRENCE

Long Lane, Over Peover

Converted for the new archive on 13 March 2001. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.