For the last few months Woking Borough Council has let out one of the properties it owns on Mercia Walk to the WeAct Group for the purposes of furthering the good work they do on environmental awareness and education. However, over the past month, the building has been used to host workshops and lectures by groups with clear political motivations – namely Extinction Rebellion, who hosted a workshop on September 3rd and Make Votes Matter, a group calling for political proportional representation on September 30th.
It expressly forbidden for Council owned premises to be used by any protest or political campaign group. Deputy Leader of Woking Borough Council, Liberal Democrat Councillor Will Forster was in attendance for the Make Votes Matter event, spoke at said event, and tweeted about it afterwards despite the knowledge that Council premises were not to be used in this manner.
Cllr Steve Dorsett of the Conservative Group, who raised a question to Full Council on this matter, said the following “WeAct have done an incredible job at raising environmental awareness over the last few weeks, but it is not appropriate for Council buildings to be used for political rallies. It is clear that Council Officers were not aware these meetings were taking place, so whoever authorised these events must have come from the Liberal Democrat administration. When I tried to ask this question to the administration, my question was batted away. This is not good enough. This is clearly a misuse of Council premises and has potentially brought the work of the Council into disrepute.”
