The enclosed submission had to be shortened because of the severe time constraints imposed by the Council.

One other thing, which is not a direct submission on the RSDF but I did want to bring to your attention:
The chairman for last night's public meeting, Mr Gerard Naidoo, was an extremely efficient chairman and ran the meeting well from a procedural perspective. However, I have one major criticism of the meeting which applies mainly to the chairman himself.

I found the language and terminology used by him to be extremely inaccessible. He was almost entirely bureaucratic and technical jargon and acronyms.

This problem was exacerbated by the fact that the bulk of the persons who participated in the questions and debate were either planners themselves or representatives of bodies who were specifically experienced in the planning field. The language used by most of these persons was difficult for a layperson to understand. Mr Naidoo was the worst culprit in this regard.
I am fortunate to have received a tertiary education and for my first language to be English but even so, as a member of the general public I found it difficult to follow the substance of what Mr Naidoo was saying. I shudder to imagine how an interested member of the public who has not received a privileged education and/or whose first language is not English would have had any idea of what was being discussed.
In short, I felt that the language and terminology used was exclusionary of those people who are not intimately familiar with development planning issues and terminology. I would hope that it is the Council's desire to reach out to all members of the public on such matters.
I therefore request that the Council make an effort to ensure that at all public meetings plain language is used by its representatives as far as possible.

Yours faithfully
Alex Eliott