IN response to Cllr Backhouse's recent letter in the Courier about the "tense atmosphere" at Crediton Town Council meetings, I should probably declare an interest.

I am one of the "regular" members of the public she refers to - one of those inconvenient residents who turns up and asks questions.

It may help to explain the motives behind such behaviour.

Firstly, I like Crediton and would quite like to see it run better. Secondly, scrutiny is part of how local democracy works, or so I'm led to believe.

And thirdly - perhaps most importantly - residents paying the highest town council precept in Mid Devon (by some distance), are entitled to ask what they are getting for that money.

Crediton’s precept is larger than Tiverton’s and Cullompton’s, yet almost half of it currently disappears into staff costs before the town sees any visible benefit at all.

Recently, there was even talk of hiring a “communications officer”. This struck me as a wonderfully modern solution: appoint someone whose job it is to explain why the council struggles to explain things. A sort of official interpreter for silence.

But the real source of tension is rarely tone. It is performance.

Residents do not usually arrive at meetings looking for confrontation. Most start by asking straightforward questions about straightforward problems.

The difficulty is that those straightforward problems often take an astonishing amount of time to resolve.

Take the examples mentioned in the councillor’s own letter. The missing town signage took an entire year to replace. A YEAR.

Even if the replacement process involved hand-forging the metal in a medieval foundry and transporting it here by mule, I still wouldn’t reasonably expect it to take that long.

The vandalised noticeboard managed to turn what should have been a simple replacement into a three-month administrative marathon.

Then there were the Christmas trees. These were known to be reaching the end of their life early last year, and the mounting brackets were already recognised as a health and safety issue.

When I asked in April when residents would be informed they would not appear at Christmas, the reassurance was that the public would receive “plenty of notice”.

In practice, “plenty of notice” translated into excuses three days before the Christmas lights switch-on. At which point, the council seemed surprised when residents and High Street businesses appeared mildly annoyed.

Naturally, people notice these things, and naturally, they ask questions.

Yet a curious pattern emerges: the council struggles with relatively simple issues, residents ask why, and those asking the questions are quietly portrayed as the source of the tension - the “troublemakers”.

In reality, most of us want exactly the same thing - a council that works efficiently, communicates honestly, and spends public money wisely. And of course, a better Crediton.

If that occasionally requires asking uncomfortable questions, the town council needs to understand it isn't hostility; It is simply democracy doing its job.

Gary Stanley

Queen Elizabeth Drive

Crediton