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I attended some of the early meetings with Mr Clark and Mr Hunter, at their request, and was stunned by the board’s officers’ treatment of the pair.

In my many years as a senior local government officer, I had never seen such an attitude directed toward members of the public, let alone toward two working men quietly trying to preserve their livelihoods.

From the start they were treated with open hostility and by a seemingly complete indifference to their plight, their need to ply their trade and continue the use of a mooring they have been using for the past 30 years.

It appeared to me that the board’s sole aim was to effect the removal of the pair from their moorings as quickly and quietly as possible.

Starting with the lame suggestion that they were “regularising” all river usage, the board has now retreated to the catch-all of health and safety.

This is of no surprise to me, as it is often the last refuge of those without genuine order or direction.

The board’s claim that a survey showed the mooring to be unsafe is easily countered by an independent survey commissioned by the fishermen and presented to the board which contradicts this and, in any event, both Mr Draffan and the fishermen agreed that any work deemed necessary would be carried out at their own expense.

This latter survey, of course, was conveniently ignored.

Mr Clark has subsequently informed me that the pair were forced to leave the mooring under threat that their boats would be moved and their equipment disposed of. So much for diplomacy!

One wonders why some of the other such structures under the board’s care are not drawing the same attention?

I suspect that there is so much more to this saga than the simple desire to remove the pair on the grounds of harbour safety.

Perhaps they are a hindrance to some greater agenda known only to the board for the future of wharf site.

To paraphrase a Michael Caine movie line “Something smells here, George, and it ain’t the fish!”

Chris Adam Smith

Western Road

Littlehampton