It was with a mixture of anger and exasperation I read council leader Willie Innes’s letter printed in the East Lothian Courier of October 9.

Exasperation because of the manner by which the councillor has sought to eventually address the concerns raised by his constituents regarding the Cockenzie Energy Park site in an open letter to the paper.

The tone of Councillor Innes’s letter was, I felt, that of an irritated headmaster dealing with errant schoolchildren, rather than an attempt to address genuine and serious concerns raised by the residents he purports to represent.

This proposal has the potential to have a significantly negative impact on the lives of the residents of Prestonpans, Cockenzie and Port Seton. The questions posed within the questionnaires were, in my view, relevant and appropriate to be asked, and yet to be answered by our elected representatives.

I was also angered by the fact that his letter gave no acknowledgement to the concerns, worries and uncertainty of the members of his constituency who have turned up in their hundreds at community-arranged events arranged to discuss the proposed development and at which he could have attended to have face-to-face discussions with his worried constituents.

I, like many other residents, am not familiar with the machination of the council or the planning process, but to me Councillor Innes’s letter was full of bureaucratic doublespeak. What does “a cross party member/ officer working group” actually mean? Will this provide a method by which my views and those of my neighbours will be appropriately represented? And was a “working group” in place prior to the decision to grant planning permission for the Inch Cape transformer on the battlefield site? His letter gave no reassurance that my concerns or those of the community he purports to represent will be listened to.

Within the letter there is of course the Common Weal argument, that the regeneration of the site is necessary for the good of East Lothian as a whole with the implication that the communities of Prestonpans, Cockenzie and Port Seton will necessarily have to bear the impact for the good of the area as a whole. There is no acknowledgement that these communities have already accommodated the coal-fired power station that was latterly one of the most polluting in Europe; this was because the detrimental impact of living next to an industrial site was offset by the common usage of the green space that surrounded it.

The reward for siting the power station for all these years contributing to the energy needs of the nation is a council that is happy to facilitate a proposal which currently intends to: l Shoehorn a 365-day / 24-hour operation hard against the communities completely swallowing the amenity and border land previously provided; l Close the natural connective road between the communities; l Close the coastal path for those communities.

It does cause me to pause and think if this plan would have had been proposed between any other coastal communities within East Lothian, would it have reached this stage. The last time I looked, the residents of Prestonpans, Cockenzie and Port Seton were paying the same council tax same as everyone else.

Nature abhors a vacuum, and the Coastal Regeneration Alliance (reluctantly at first, I think), have filled that vacuum by engaging with the community, and created a platform to share community views, concerns and opinions with a view to ensuring engagement and appropriate options be explored.

This has been true community involvement and democracy and maybe you, Councillor Innes, as leader, should attempt to do the same.

Colin Herbert Hawthorn Terrace Cockenzie