Let’s suppose you apply for planning permission for a 30m square x 12 m high building. The parish council and many of your neighbours object and you offer consultation involving all parties. While this process is taking place, large ground-moving equipment appears on your site.

After a period of denial you finally agree that you have already spent thousands doing work on the site.

How confident would you be this was in fact a ‘done deal’ and the ‘consultation’ offered simply a smokescreen?

This seems to be what Cheshire East has done over its proposed new waste transfer station on green belt land at Lyme Green – carrying out some work before giving themselves planning permission to go ahead with this controversial project.

This proved as much of a surprise for local representative and cabinet member coun Hilda Gaddum as it did for her constituents.

"I believe the local community has been treated shabbily," she told a heated planning meeting. Coun John Hammond said: "We are the council, we should be setting an example." (You’re not wrong there, councillor.)

Waste manager Ray Skip missed the meeting due to a ‘timing mix-up’ while an officer at the meeting claimed instructions to start work were given by corporate director John Nicholson.

The latest news is that CEC have now withdrawn its application, which begs the question who’s going to foot the bill for the reported £500K already spent? No, don’t answer that one. I think we can guess.

Meanwhile services are being cut, employees laid off amid much weeping and wailing about budget shortfalls.

It’s hard to see how a council so punctilious with the finite detail of its planning process can plunge ahead with such blatant disregard for any and all of the rules they inflict on others. It’s even more incredible that the whole project was hidden from their own cabinet member who represents the area.

"I have been made to look a fool – or worse – a liar," said an angry Coun Gaddum.

So, who accepts responsibility for this monumental cock-up? Vulnerable residents are losing services while others pay more for less.

We have one of the highest care costs in the country and our council wastes huge amounts of money on a project for which it has no planning approval while apparently misleading a cabinet member.

Whose head rolls for this? In the commercial world (where everyone else lives) that decision would already be made. Executives would be heading for the exit.

Every time you hear of a cut in some service affecting the elderly and infirm I want you to reflect on that money. Every time a care worker loses her job or some other poor soul on minimum wage gets laid off I want you to think about that waste.

If you work in the rapidly-disappearing mental health sector where families are being pushed to desperation, consider what those thousands would have done for them.

Now, stand back and watch the fudging begin.