Councillors attempted to explain their approach to gathering views for a public consultation exercise after accusations were made following the disclosure of an internal email.

Questions were asked at a Portland Town Council (PTC) meeting amid claims some residents had not been allowed to participate in part of the process.

PTC ran a public consultation to obtain views as it wants to purchase the former Brackenbury Infants School site and turn it into a community hub known as Beach.

Separately, it also conducted a public survey as it had to provide ‘further evidence of demand’ before it could proceed to the next stage and obtain grant funding to finance its plans. The survey asked how people would use the proposed hub.

Speaking at the meeting, Cllr Lucy Grieve said although some hard-to-reach groups were specifically targeted, the survey was otherwise ‘deliberately random’ to be more representative of residents.

More than 270 responses had been collected to ascertain ‘how likely people were to use the hub.’

However, Easton resident Paul Snow questioned the way councillors had conducted the survey and read out an email he said he received in error.

He said the email, sent by Cllr Grieve to fellow councillors which had then been forwarded to him, informed recipients to “send the (survey) link to absolutely everyone you know who lives or works on Portland - not opponents of the project”.

Mr Snow said the email indicated the survey had not been ‘deliberately random’.

At the meeting, county councillor Kathy Garcia said she had been made aware that some people had not been able to take part in the survey including one resident who had been denied a copy at the town council offices.

She said: “I have had a number of residents contact me, who have been too scared to express a negative view about Beach for fear of reprisals from some members of the town council.”

A Tophill resident, who didn’t want to be named, said: “I ask that the councillor who wrote the email take no further part in this project.

“I ask that black listing people who speak out for what is right stops now.”

CONFUSION OVER SURVEY

Residents were told that the public consultation and public survey were different matters. The survey’s aim was to collect views to establish how people would use the hub, not asking whether they support the facility or not.

At the meeting, Cllr Grieve said an “amount of disinformation had been put out” that the consultation and the survey were the same thing.

“We made it crystal clear what the difference was,” she said.

She said the details of the public consultation were given in an issue of the Free Portland News and residents had been given a week to express their views on the bid.

She added, if successful, the grant would help prevent the precept increase and the survey to support the application was for ‘users’ of the hub to identify which services they would utilise.

“If someone was indifferent they are unlikely to use the hub,” she said. “I fail to see what the problem is with councillors being at shops collecting responses. It was totally random.

“If someone doesn’t support the hub, there’s no point in them filling out the survey; as it’s about what services they are going to use.”

Cllr Ray Nowak said: “I think Cllr Grieve has made it perfectly clear. It’s to find funding to stop an increase in the precept. The fact that we are reducing that burden by getting additional funding for the island would be something we all welcome.”