During the encounter, a council officer (who did not identify himself) approached an independent punt operator who was in the process of dealing with some customers. The council officer told the independent punt operator that what he was doing was dangerous (loading customers onto a punt from Quayside) and that he (the council officer) would be shutting down independent punt operators. Asked when this would be, he said that he knew but that he wasn’t going to divulge the information.
A telephone call later that afternoon to the Cambridge City Council revealed that the council officer in question was Alastair Roberts, one of the council officers supposedly charged with providing independent punt operators with somewhere to operate from…
There then followed a series of emails between the two, with the council as usual being unwilling to divulge any real information.