Empty Promises (Larne Borough Council)

Name: Belfastgirl

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Product:	Larne Borough Council
Date:	02/04/01 (88 review reads)
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Disadvantages: see text - empty promises

Larne, ahhh even the word makes my stomach churn and my entire body shudder. Yes, it is the place I grew up in, the place that I went to school, the place I couldn’t wait to leave when I was 18. We are not here to talk about the town, but in order to give you a little background I will describe it.

The population of Larne is 30,000 plus, but with the amount of people pushing prams around the town nowadays, I'm am sure it is a lot more now -there has been a massive baby boom since the last census. Larne is situated by the sea, on the beautiful Antrim coastline. Larne has been called, "The gateway to Northern Ireland" due to the fact that it has a port, P&O operate out of it, but there is rumours that Stena Line is returning. That is another thing Larne is famous for - Rumours. Recently Larne has had some very bad press concerning sectarian attacks on both Protestants and Catholics. There also is a high rate of unemployment. Taking these things into consideration, after reading on Dooyoo that Larne Borough Council had a web page, I just had to see this!

Let's see what it gives us.

The web site is entitled "Larne net" and opens with a nice graphic of the word Larne, and the page is surrounded by pictures taken of the town - such as Chaine Memorial (a tower that is situated by the sea), the harbour at night, and funniest of all - the Flats. These Flats have big murals painted on the side of them, I know every detail of these murals because while I was studying A-Level physics, I could see them being painted from the classroom. It made for more fun than the Physics Class.

The page contains a scrolling news bar, courtesy of the Larne Times, telling us the latest News from Larne. Funny it doesn't mention the pipe bombs that have become a regular occurrence.

On to the council. Clicking on the link to Larne Borough Council, it takes us to a page entitled Larne Economic Development P
rogramme.

Here we find out a few little details about the council, such as, "The Council is also committed to taking account of the needs of its citizens, visitors and those who are engaged in employment in the area." Not wanting to seem bitter, I will not rant about how this does not correlate with personal experience.

It then discusses the area that Larne Borough covers, and give contacts if you want any further information.

Next we have a detailed rundown of the Larne Borough Council Structure - the Mayor, Deputy mayor, Aldermen, and those council members for the Coast Road, Larne Town and Larne Lough areas.

Councils services are next on the list, these are:-

BUILDING CONTROL DEPARTMENT

ENVIRONMENTAL HEALTH DEPARTMENT

AMENITY SERVICES DEPARTMENT

TOURISM, LEISURE & COMMUNITY SERVICES - it is here that they boast the fact that we have a state of the art leisure centre (just because we were practically the last big town in Northern Ireland to get one!)and their Tourist information Centre (which I must say is very good).


The web site is quite vast, offering services such as finding accommodation in the town and a profile boasting how good the town is (don't believe it). Admittedly, Larne has some good Tourist sites and these are emphasised greatly on the site.

The industry section discusses how Larne has many international developers, basically saying "How wonderful are we?"... none of which I believe. The town is falling apart, just recently a large number of people were made redundant from the paper mill - one of the biggest companies in Larne. OK, we do have FG Wilson's which is internationally acclaimed, but even this doesn’t meet the ideals that they have.

Larne has a development forum, which is made up of volunteers from the town. Their aim is to:-
· Development of existing businesses and industries within the Bor
ough of Larne.
· Encouraging enterprise.
· Infrastructural improvements.
· Community development.
· Retail and commercial development.
· The image of Larne.
· Tourism development.

A good idea, but since this has been going since 1995, I can't exactly see any changes so far!

I will admit, I do not like Larne, I feel that the council makes very empty promises to the people of the town. They spend their money unwisely. For example, they changed their offices to the new building, this place cost a fortune for them to refurbish, when their old offices were fine. This money could have gone somewhere worthwhile - for example arranging cross community projects to help integrate Protestant and Catholic children, so in the future the bigotry that is so evident in the town today would be minimised. They could have put more money into the roads - anyone who has been near Larne recently will know how terrible they are - being dug up left, right and centre. This is not good for tourism.

So what am I saying here? Well, If you take a look at the web site, it looks lovely - even I was nearly fooled! In reality, this is not what Larne is like. The Council in Larne are not the wonderful group that they paint themselves to be on the site. Other people may buy it, but I don’t - and I’m not holding my breath to see what the future brings.

If anyone would like to contact Larne Borough Council for any reason, then they can be reached at this address:

Larne Borough Council
Smiley Buildings, Victoria Road
Larne, BT40 1RU

Tel: 028 2827 2313 Fax: 028 2826 0660

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