Mepal Outdoor Centre to become a crematorium

We tried. We tried everything we could think of to persuade the Council to come clean on what it was going to be deciding tonight.

We proposed that the meeting be adjourned to another day so that the information that really needed to be confidential could be kept confidential, and the rest made public. When that failed, we proposed to adjourn the meeting for an hour for the same reason.

We voted against excluding the press and public. After the press and public were excluded, we proposed that the whole matter be referred to the Council’s Finance & Assets Committee. We proposed amendments to refer parts of the paper to the Committee.

But at every turn we were defeated and secrecy prevailed until the decision was taken.

The Council has now confirmed what has been rumoured for weeks – that the Outdoor Centre at Mepal will become a crematorium, just thirteen minutes’ drive away from its nearest competitor at March.

No convincing argument has been made for the need for this facility. It’s not mentioned in the Council’s Local Plan. It’s not mentioned in the replacement Local Plan that the Council’s ruling group decided to abandon in February last year. It’s not even mentioned in the Council’s Corporate Plan that it agreed two weeks ago, just as it wasn’t mentioned in the Council’s Corporate Plan last year either.

And no real effort has been made to restore it to leisure use in the last two years, which is what I believe the majority of local residents would like to see.

It’s not over yet.

But a decision has been taken in secret tonight to move this proposal forward, with myself and my Liberal Democrat colleagues voting against it. And the further it moves forward without being stopped, the more time and money is spent on it.

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