Do we recall that the planning inspector gave permission for 50 homes at Winchester Park, Feniton?
According to the marketing blurb, there are 55 (you may need to enlarge this picture, from the front window of an estate agent) to see that there are 55 numbered plots, including the show home and marketing suite. If so, should the attenuation tanks be 10% larger?
Note: a correspondent says this is actually a development in Rockbeare which presumably IS for 55 houses – whoops!
Not because it makes good sense now or in the future but as a knee-jerk reaction to poor spending management in the past. That would explain why current reorganisation plans don’t have any numbers in them – the numbers are too shocking:
and here
If more people than ever are on low wages should we:
a. be building more REALLY affordable housing near places where they live and work
c. or building more high price executive homes on green fields in rural areas with poor commuting facilities.
Common sense says a, EDDC says b.
Claire Wright, EDDC Independent Councillor, has long been campaigning to keep the River Otter beavers. Hugo has just jumped on her bandwaggon rather late in the day.
Claire Wright started campaigning to save local community hospitals as soon as news got out that they were threatened and immediately organised a public meeting about her local hospital, attended by more than 200 people. Hugo was initially pro “efficiency changes” saying ” now is not the time to “whip up excitement”
However, he did bring up smelly drains in Sidmouth and Ottery, having been pictured with his nose down one such drain, promising to get it fixed when it was clear from marks on the pavement in the accompanying picture that remedial work had already been scheduled – as it is in all the towns and villages of East Devon.
He also stole a march on pizza-making in Sainsbury’s in Ottery.
So, if you want to save hospitals and beavers, perhaps Claire Wright is your best bet. But if you want an acute nose for nasty smells and you need to have a pizza made in Sainsbury’s Hugo is your man.
And it’s still more than six months to the general election!
“With a local plan you’re balancing so many tensions and factors. I defy anybody to do it in less than two to three years.”
Peter Gruen, cabinet member for housing, Leeds Council
Or, in the case of East Devon District Council, 7 years and counting …..
And Leeds is more complex!
Should you feel the urge to write to your MP or distrct councillors, as we are sure MANY of you do, this site will make it very easy
Tony Hogg, the Police and Crime Commissioner, will attend next month’s Overview and Scrutiny committee. EDA has heard that Councillors have been invited to offer questions to put to him before his presentation to the committee. Alternatively, Councillors can wait until the meeting itself, but Mr Hogg’s office have asked for notice of any questions where possible.
Information sent to us by an EDA correspondent, with a following comment:
An article on p.13 of today’s issue of Sidmouth Herald states:
“A fall in the number of people claiming Job Seekers’ Allowance in Sidmouth and in Ottery St Mary has contributed to the lowest Devon-wide claimant figures on record.”
61 claimants in Sidmouth
32 claimants in Ottery St Mary
0.9% of working age population v national average of 2.3%
________________________________________
Only 61 claimants? How does that square with EDDC plans for 1,350 jobs planned for Sidford and their ambitions to reduce commuting?
This letter from Tony Green of the East Devon Alliance, was published in today’s Sidmouth Herald, with the title, ‘Frightening stuff’ : As the nights draw in 18.10.14
…show some disgruntlement with EDDC.
https://www.streetlife.com/p/wGsx0/
https://www.streetlife.com/conversation/w6mud6xf5wm3/
Is the present National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) based on correct targets?
The latest comments on the Parliamentary Enquiry into the NPPF are now visible on the national Community Voice on Planning website, so please see the home page for a link. http://covop.org/ .
East Devon Alliance is of course an active participant in CoVoP.
Putting in the words “council new offices vanity projects” brings up SCORES of entries for councils all over the country wanting to spend millions and millions of pounds on themselves. Here are just a few entries from the first couple of pages. All of these examples have taken place in the last 5 years during which we have had a dreadful recession and austerity cuts and there are many more examples:
http://insidecroydon.com/2013/01/11/140-million-the-cost-of-our-councils-secrecy-and-vanity/
http://www.eadt.co.uk/news/politics_2_480/coastal_new_council_offices_could_cost_millions_1_3158985
It’s rather ironic when pensioners are told to heat only one room because they can’t afford their heating bills to see councillors being profligate with our money because they want their taste of luxury.
We tried to find the most significant facts in this long and shocking article, but really it must be read from beginning to end.
It exposes the disgraceful tactics that developers use to maximise their profits and minimise their obligations.
Be afraid, be VERY afraid:
Electoral Ommission
A really hard-hitting report about the failure of the Electoral Commission to get to grips with administrative bungling, fraud and blatent “looking the other way” to avoid responsibility. This 60 page report makes frightening reading about a subject we already find worrying enough with a Chief Executive who reports to himself not being at all worried that he lost 6,000 plus voters at the European Elections and finding Parliamentary scrutiny about it an irritation.
Fortunately, he does not have to worry about local scrutiny as the Overview and Scrutiny committee majority party members agreed to do what he said and refuse to deal with the matter – on the casting vote of its majority party Chairman.
Here is its introduction:
“This study reviews progress seven years after the Committee on Standards in Public Life’s 2007 Report and poses five main questions:
How inaccurate is the electoral register? To what extent is administrative failure responsible for any inaccuracies that occur?
What is the extent of voting fraud in the UK?
Has the Electoral Commission implemented the main recommendation of the
Committee on Standards in Public Life, that the Electoral Commission should focus on administering elections rather than policymaking and on promoting participation?
Are the delays being considered by the Electoral Commission in implementing individual voter registration and in introducing the requirement for voter identification at polling stations justified and acceptable?
Are measures being taken by the Cabinet Office to improve the accuracy of the electoral registers for the May 2015 General Election adequate?
The four main conclusions of this report are:
The administration of elections in the UK remains dangerously inefficient and seriously open to fraud.
There remains within the various bodies responsible for electoral administration a culture of complacency and denial.
The Electoral Commission has taken too few meaningful steps to address the recommendation of the Committee on Standards in Public Life that it focus on its regulatory role.
There is an emerging danger of partisan divisions between the two main political parties about whether or not to tolerate this situation. Too often, a bogus dilemma has been cited between the aims of encouraging voting by members of socially disadvantaged groups and guarding against fraud.
Too little has changed since the Committee on Standards in Public Life published its report into the Electoral Commission in January 2007.4 The main change between 2007 and 2014 is that the headline statistics show that the problems of inaccuracy in the electoral registers, already serious in 1981 and worse in 2007, have continued to amplify.
Good electoral administration is a regulatory matter requiring determined administrative action. Yet the bodies responsible for such administration – local government authorities, the Cabinet Office (currently responsible for electoral matters at central government level), and the Electoral Commission – have too often failed to act. It is too easy to blame sociological factors and voter disengagement for what are administrative shortcomings.”
Source: http://www.policyexchange.org.uk/images/publications/electoral%20omission.pdf
New Vision for NHS says small local hospitals will remain
Setting out his vision for the next five years, NHS England chief executive Simon Stevens said that the health service would have to break out of its “narrow confines” and promote healthy lifestyles.
Entirely new models of care, which could include GP surgeries clubbing together into federations to replace many services currently carried out in hospitals, will be set up across the country.
The report, Five Year Forward View, which has been produced by NHS England along with other national NHS bodies including Public Health England and the Care Quality Commission, throws down the gauntlet to the next government on the long-term future and funding of the NHS in England.
It sets out a wide-ranging vision for the future of the health service, with reforms in almost all key areas of care, For example on Hospitals:
Hospitals Care and surgery for many serious conditions – such as stroke, heart disease and some cancers – to be concentrated at specialist centres. However, small local hospitals will remain, and in some places could be taken over by new, GP-local care organisations led groups. Large hospitals in big cities could take on responsibility for leading community care and GP services in their area.
Read Full Article here:
http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/health-news/firms-to-receive-nhs-cash-to-reward-staff-for-losing-weight-in-radical-model-for-health-care-9811782.html
Currently only highly localised infrastructure can be constructed when developments take place – they must be tightly linked to that development, though in some cases even that is not completed: developers strike down all affordable housing and don’t put in attenuation tanks unless threatened.
We have no local plan so we cannot charge developers “Community Infrastrructure Levy” – an extra charge based on the site and size of the development that, if in place, they could not avoid.
As a result, for example, East Devon has woeful public transport. This has bedn highlighted by the planned community hospital closures. How do you get from Ottery to Seaton or from Axminster to Budleigh Salterton without a car – if you do not qualify for ambulances? The answer is: you get a taxi there and back. Let’s say a very conservative £20 -£30 per round trip.
Most people as inpatients or visitors to our community hospitals are elderly. Many, if they can drive, cannot drive at night. What do they do if they cannot afford the luxury of taxis to visit relatives?
And let’s not get started about how we all get to Skypark!
Blame? Buck stopping? Our district council. More interested in helping developers to build more houses for more people needing more services, no interest at all in dealing with the fallout.
Our only remedy? The ballot box in May 2015.
That’s the situation in the NHS, according to Dr David Drew (author of Little Stories of Life and Death), in his BBC Radio 4 interview broadcast this morning.
The councillors (coincidentally none from the ruling Party) who have been hounded by EDDC, may identify with the situation the NHS whistleblowers are in. The latest to be bullied is Axminster Town Councillor, Paul Haywood, whose letter to the press is copied below. It was published in Pullman’s View from Sidmouth this weekend.
‘On the evening of Monday 13th October, during a public session of Axminster Town Council, I was subjected to an uncalled for attack on my personal character by Cllr Andrew Moulding of such enmity and vitriol that it took my breath away. Supported by Cllr. Graham Godbeer, he claimed that I had brought the town council into disrepute, and caused acute embarrassment to his County Council colleagues, by way of my use of Facebook to show support for the campaign group seeking to retain Axminster library.
With regards to the spurious basis of his diatribe, and his claim that I had breached the Councillors Code of Conduct and should thus be reported to the Standards Committee at EDDC, I have no option but to await a formal complaint against me, something which should be done in a proper, and pre-determined manner according to the rules laid down for such complaints.
However, as Cllr Moulding and Godbeer now steadfastly believe that disagreements between Councillors – be they Town, District or County – can be reasonably aired in public, I would ask to be allowed to put a question to both of these gentlemen via your publication.
Are both of you content and happy at the way in which Axminster is being treated by all and sundry?
Having already lost DCC funding for our youth service, having our library chronically underfunded, our hospital at risk of losing its beds; we now find ourselves further adrift from the District Council, which seems intent on moving its HQ as far as humanly possible from Axminster, without adequate transport links being put in place. There is no Local Plan in place, the DC has been taken to court by the ICO for failing to divulge information under the FOI Act, our Chief Executive is summoned to Westminster to explain his failings in improving voter registration number and is accused of breaching electoral law.
Draconian public speaking restrictions are scheduled that will prevent both members of the public and town councillors alike from objecting to unnecessary and unsustainable planning and development in our town.
Our pavements are a disgrace, there are weeds on every road and in every car park, the wall outside the Guildhall remains collapsed, the additional dog bins remain uninstalled, the town centre remains an eyesore – sadly mentioned by all visitors – and has been so for decades despite years of your stewardship at all levels of local government. Axminster has no town centre regeneration plan in place at EDDC and yet you, Cllr Moulding, inexplicably sit on the regeneration board for Exmouth!
Our young people have so very few job prospects presently, but when another 1000 houses are built to the north and east of town, what is the plan for employment then? ; According to you both, the answer lies West! Get on the train to Cranbrook, to Skypark, to SciencePark, to Exeter… that is your local plan, and the bedrock of the proposed local plan for the whole of East Devon.
If you are both happy with this state of affairs, and stand firm in your belief that the people of Axminster should pay their taxes AND deliver the services as volunteers too, and if you believe that a polite cartoon poking fun at a professional, well paid politician who showed the utmost disrespect and disdain to the people of Axminster, our MP and our Town Council is more important than the long term interests of the people of this town who you claim to represent, then I think it is time that you have a long, hard look in the mirror and decide who you really represent – the public, or your party… because you can’t serve them both!’
Other cases of dissenting councillors being harrassed by EDDC, will be the subject of another EDA post soon.
East Devon Watch 