Please comment again – Dog Ban comments ‘deleted’

Due to a ‘technical glitch’, all the comments left on the consult website at the council prior to 16 November 2017 have been deleted.

Thank you for your earlier email(s).

We have already received a number of responses to the PSPO consultation however we are aware that the initial wording on the online portal was confusing. We have since clarified the details and updated the portal to make it clear that we are not proposing to exclude dogs from Hawkenbury Recreation Ground.

Did you respond to the online consultation during the period when it first opened, up to 5pm on Thursday 16 November?

Our software provider has advised that they had a technical glitch in the system when the consultation first opened and as a result unfortunately not all responses were recorded. Please note only this consultation was affected.

Because of this we have extended the consultation until 11.59pm, 7 January and we would be very grateful if you would take a few minutes and submit your views again so we can be sure we have captured everyone’s opinion.

We apologise for any inconvenience caused, but we do want to hear what you think so please have your say http://consult.tunbridgewells.gov.uk/portal/comm_safe/pspo

Any comments already received by email have been noted and will be included in the final report to councillors.

Regards
Terry Hughes

If you have commented before, I would encourage you to comment again. Please encourage your friends, family and fellow dog walkers to comment again, that the council officers in charge get a sense of how angry we are.

The level of incompetence shown during this consultation is unbelievable. At first, they tried to hide the measure on the second page of a non-descript survey, then they quietly modified it and now they have managed to ‘delete’ all the initial comments. And this is after they changed the parameters of the consultation.

What they have done is reworded the consultation and opted to start afresh by deleted all the initial comments, as to try and get a softer outcome from the consultation. Whilst Hawkenbury Recreation Ground has been removed from the consultation, I would encourage you to have your say. It wouldn’t surprise me if they tried to implement the measure, regardless of our comments.

Please comment again.

22 November 2017 – Update

I received the following from the Council.

Firstly I would like to apologise that your comments were not captured on the online portal.

This was not a problem with the data base it was a problem with two fields on the comment form attached to the PSPO consultation (the name and postcode fields, which were mandatory fields). As they were required fields, an error message should have come up when people tried to submit their comments, but it didn’t. The problem only affected the PSPO consultation. We have received online comments on the other open consultations, as each consultation uses a different comment form.

As soon as we became aware of this we referred the matter to the software company who have since fixed the issue and we are checking regularly to ensure that comments are being added to the system. We have extended the consultation deadline and retained the emails we have received. Every comment will be included as part of the cabinet report.

I apologise once again.

Paul Taylor
Director of Change & Communities