MEMBERS of Otley and District Chamber of Trade invite the Press to report on their meetings. That is right and proper as they are an important and influential group of business people who have the interests of the town at heart.

However, because a member claims to have been misreported - not by this newspaper, we hasten to add - they have demanded that individuals who speak at meetings with reporters present must not be named in newspaper reports.

This is far from right and proper. Chamber of trade members make decisions that affect the general public and their views should be reported in the public interest. People who put themselves forward to pontificate on issues affecting the rest of us should have the courage of their convictions and not try to hide behind anonymity.

A major reason for our journalists being at any meeting is to report the debates. To try to do so without naming the speakers would be a nonsense.

If there are confidential issues to be discussed, then the chamber can always exclude reporters from that part of the meeting. However, if members wish their general activities and opinions to gain wider coverage, they should stand up and be counted.

We urge chamber members to think again on this issue. Otherwise, there seems little point in us bothering to send reporters to their meetings at all.

SAINSBURY'S has now put forward the somewhat attractive carrot of the restoration of the old tannery building in Gay Lane into flats.

Whatever people feel about the former tannery - whether it should be saved as a part of Otley's industrial past, or that it should be reduced to a pile of dust and replaced with a new supermarket - is not important. What is important is that someone is interested in spending huge amounts of cash to turn it into rather nice living accommodation.

In what could easily be termed 'planning gain', Sainsbury's says if it gets planning permission for its store in Bondgate, and if the tannery site is not needed for the relocated fire station, then the tannery will be turned into residential use.

So, now not only have we got a supermarket planned for the town centre, we've also got the prospect of having a rather unsightly entrance to Otley tidied up - it's what some people have been shouting about for years.

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.