I AM A LOCAL councillor with Bude-Stratton Town Council (BSTC) and at the council meeting on Thursday we had a visit from David Whalley and Mike Brown to explain the changes proposed by the Boundary Commis­sion for the districts engaged in the new Unitary Council. We have been aware that there were plans but did not receive the final details of their recommendation until that evening.

To the astonishment of many of us and particularly those who represent Poughill Ward on the BSTC it was noted that the commission intended to leave Poughill as part of BSTC for parish elections — as has historically always been the case but to link it with Kilkhampton, Morwenstow and other mainly rural areas for Unitary Council elections.

When asked why this ­severance should take place it seems the Boundary Commission are playing a 'numbers game' and have no interest in local democratic representation.

Poughill is a village ­suburb of Bude and all its services are supplied through the Bude-Stratton community; schools, hospitals, doctors, dentists, shops, Post Office, public transport, family relationships, entertainment and the like and there are no natural links with Morwenstow, Kilkhampton and the other farming ­communities around.

We were informed that the decisions were likely to be made on Tuesday, February 10 and that was about it.

Having chatted with a number of councillors and talked in some depth to Lea Deely (a fellow councillor) we decided to see what the people of Poughill thought and set up a simple questionnaire which we printed and delivered to the homes in the main village this afternoon.

There are approximately 175 houses in the village itself and by 8pm this evening we have received responses from around 40 residents by phone, email and tear off slip. Every one of them is opposed to Poughill being removed from the natural relationship with Bude and Stratton and not a single mention of wanting to join with Kilkhampton Morwenstow etc.

Bearing in mind that a proportion of the village properties are used as ­holiday homes, many residents are elderly and about 10 per cent have external lockable post boxes so won't event know of the form till Monday I think this is a response that needs ­publicising.

I am doing all I can to make the Boundary Commission aware of the ludicrous situation of removing an integral part of the Bude Stratton community and dumping it into an area with no natural relationship — Kilkhampton is about five miles away and Morwenstow over double that distance.

If this commission succeed in removing Poughill from Bude-Stratton it will effectively mean that the village will be unrepresented at unitary level as they will have no local access to the elected person. It also means that if they want a town councillor to help take an issue up with the county there will be no direct relationship between Bude-Stratton Town Council and the elected representative for Kilkhampton-Morwen­stow.

To add insult to injury the commission are calling the district Felxbury and Poughill which is a slight on the much larger Kilkhampton, an insult to the people of Flexbury (as they have spelt the name incorrectly) and amazingly the new area does not include Flexbury at all which remains inside the Bude Unitary district!

Poughill.