As If We Had A Crystal Ball
Over three years ago, we printed and delivered this leaflet to 2,000 local homes. At the time we were accused of being racist and over reacting by a section of the local community. Of course, these are the same people that sat in the 100 car long queue in Beehive Lane, honking their horns in frustration, on Eid and Good Friday.
Were we right, or were we right ?
Take a look at the key points of the leaflet, our main concerns in 2020 were the escalation of the use of Hamptons as a mosque, issues caused by parking and traffic from worshippers and the long term viability of the business
Does anyone now doubt that:
Hamptons is primarily a mosque,
That the 98 parking spaces are woefully inadequate for a mosque of this size (see video below)
The business side of Hamptons has crashed and burned
The role of the council officials
Let’s be clear, the City Council is terrified of the Chelmsford Muslim Society, and any claims of racism or Islamophobia, will severely dent the woke credentials of the local authority, who is more interested in ticking diversity boxes, than supporting residents.
Even the Chief Executive has tried to bully our team into not contacting our (your) elected councillors. We declined to follow his demands, and carried on anyway !!
Complaints we lodged against councillors and council officials, fell on the desk of the very same individuals who sought to silence our campaign, and were stonewalled and dismissed.
Every incremental increase in the use of Hamptons as a Place of Worship, has been greeted with facilitation and legal loopholes provided by council officials, who seem to have no intention of protecting a community asset, as is required by the Local Plan. And this is where we are currently:
Does this sound like a sports and leisure centre to you ?
Even when residents have reported breaches of planning control to Planning Enforcement, officers tipped off CMS about surprise visits, or carried out observations at non busy times, so saw nothing wrong.
Outrageous claims ? No, we can prove all of these allegations, using the council’s own documents, obtained under the Freedom Of Information Act.
The Role Of Our Elected Councillors
Isn’t it great to see our elected councillors so engaged in solving issues involving Hamptons. It’s only taken three years to get them to act !!
We wonder what could’ve prompted their sudden enthusiasm ? Our crystal ball is showing a connection to a date, May 4th !!
We’ve seen the same councillors organising cross party resistance to our campaign, and reporting posts made by residents on social media to council officials, which breaches data protection and surveillance laws. Our campaign was described by one of our local councillors as a “small but vocal minority”
Baseless allegations ? No, we have the council’s own documents to prove our claims.
And let’s not forget the leader of the council, who is keen to promote Hamptons as a beacon of diversity and is concerned that our campaign is spreading “division and discord”, when all we did is reproduce a fundraising flyer produced by CMS, and deliver it to 2,000 local homes.
