The man who encourages councils to build everywhere now sats “don’t build everywhere”.
It’s a sure sign we are in an election period when we see ministers rowing back from unpleasant policies they know will lose them votes!
Stop unnecessarily threatening the green belt, Nick Boles tells councils
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/10828669/Stop-unnecessarily-threatening-the-green-belt-Nick-Boles-tells-councils.html
Please see following link and scroll down to East Devon Alliance to see our submission:
EDDC tries to silence minority councillors
http://www.claire-wright.org/index.php/post/eddc_to_impose_restrictions_on_motions
Police try to silence blogger:
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/may/12/police-ask-blogger-remove-legitimate-tweet-ukip
Is there a pattern here?
And here is an American view on it:
….. “Last year, Devon, Cornwall and Somerset attracted 1.3m visits from abroad – 536,000 in Devon (up 148,000), 319,000 in Cornwall (an increase of 16,000) and 496,000 in Somerset (up 101,000).”
Can anyone. recall any major initiative on tourism by East Devon District Council in the last few years? Anyone recall the name of the EDDC Champion for Tourism?
Read more at http://www.westernmorningnews.co.uk/Foreign-tourist-lavish-552m-Devon-Cornwall/story-21086915-detail/story.html#FUWOoiyvj6dzSEcO.99
South Somerset is Lib Dem controlled but shares the same Chief Executive with East Devon District Council:
….; “Cllr Nick Colbert raised fears that the council had “not properly listened” to the inspector’s demands.
He said: “We can’t just say the inspector doesn’t know what he’s talking about, and I’ve got serious worries that this whole plan is going to go down.”
http://www.westerngazette.co.uk/Government-held-gun-heads-Local-Plan-south/story-20819075-detail/story.html
This is a somewhat technical article but one point made is that your Local Plan will fail if you have not documented and minuted things such as how you have dealt with the “Duty to Co-operate”.
Our council is very lax with its minutes: some meetings have no minutes at all, some have minutes that seem to bear little resemblance to the meetings that took place and some minutes are so secret that no-one except those in the meetings get to see them. Transparency pays off in the end.
East Devon Watch 