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Monthly Archives: October 2014
Why are the missing 6,000 voters so critical?
THIS is why:
A majority of 617. UKIP could have won if just another 1,000 or so voters had been registered.
Is this what our council is afraid of?
More on Mid-Devon’s missing voters
Well, we can aee how their CEO is attempting to wriggle out of his responsibilities. Will ours choose the same route? Will the Parliamentary Select Committee buy it?
As a commentator said – Devon is hardly the Sahara where canvassers have to chase tribespeople on camels to persuade them to register to vote!
And sparsely populated regions of Scotland seemed to manage registration too!
Police and Crime Commissioner in Honiton on Monday but questions must be posed in advance in writing
Looks like he follows the EDDC mode of public (non) engagement.
His last outing had ONE audience member – bet he gets more in Honiton!
The Mid-Devon CEO sees no point in house to house canvassing
Wonder if the Parliamentary Select Committee will agree with him on Monday?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-27466042
Voter engagement in Mid Devon – not worth the money it seems. Wonder if he told councillors of his views and what they thought then and think now?
What if all those 6,000+ electors had been registered for the Euro Parliament elections?
And if Mid Devon had done its homework too?
Well, here is what did happen in East Devon:
Click to access eu-elections-lro-declaration.pdf
Here is what happened in Mid Devon:
http://www.middevon.gov.uk/CHttpHandler.ashx?id=23530&p=0
Here is the result for the South West region
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_West_England_(European_Parliament_constituency)
Interesting – another few thousand votes could have tipped balances.
Hugo “makes” a pizza in Ottery Sainsbury’s
on the front page of View from Ottery, Hugo in Ottery Sainsbury’s getting instruction from staff in food hygeine with the headline “More cheese on mine, please, Hugo”.
We say “makes” as the pizzas in the picture appear to be ready-made and pre-packaged:
http://edition.pagesuite-professional.co.uk/launch.aspx?pbid=ee7f26a7-0428-45aa-bd93-f815f1ec6808
and we can’t reveal whether he was on a zero hours contract or an unpaid intern.
Please let us know if you see Hugo shopping in our local Tesco or Sainsbury’s stores (Waitrose doesn’t count, obviously!).
He also apparently “worked” on the fish counter … no, no, won’t go there.
Pickles says brownfield land should be developed first
Unfortunately, he says “should” (advice which can be ignored) and not “must” (law which must be obeyed). So, no change in East Devon as green fields and Grade 1 and 2 agricultural land is swiftly turned into concrete:
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/councils-must-protect-our-precious-green-belt-land
Devon’s rural roads most dangerous in Britain
“Researchers for THINK! found that nearly a third of drivers in the region report having had a crash or near miss on a country road, while 42% have been surprised by an unexpected hazard, such as an animal on the road. Over a third also confess to taking a bend too fast.”
Read more: http://www.westernmorningnews.co.uk/Campaign-launched-West-s-rural-roads-revealed/story-23063234-detail/story.html#ixzz3Fe4zeHZU
Follow us: @WMNNews on Twitter | westernmorningnews on Facebook
Read more at http://www.westernmorningnews.co.uk/Campaign-launched-West-s-rural-roads-revealed/story-23063234-detail/story.html#7ztVpD8XHqYmxGyB.99
And yet EDDC proceeds to allow the building of 300+ houses in Gittisham: where the only route in and out is a very narrow country road with an even narrower point at an overhead main line railway bridge:
New buyers drop for south-west homes
And still we build more and more. If people can’t afford them what happens next? If interest rates go up and put those in homes in negative equity where they can’t afford higher payments – what next?
New planning rules evict successful businesses from offices turned into homes
Email from Chairman of EDA to Chairman and Vice-Chairman of EDDC Overview and Scrutiny Committee
I have written this evening to the Chairman of the O&S Committee, Cllr Tim Wood, and copied to his deputy, Cllr Graham Troman. My letter reads:
Dear Councillor Wood
I am a council tax payer living in East Devon, and my full details are below. I write to you in your role as Chairman of the EDDC Overview and Scrutiny Committee.
I would be grateful if you could answer the following questions urgently, as they relate to an event of unusual local concern on Monday in Westminster as well as to Full Council next Wednesday, when I and others will ask about your Chief Executive’s dismissal of sincere concerns put to him in July’s public question time by Mr Paul Freeman. I was in attendance, and can confirm that the minutes are correct, and that Mr Williams did tell Mr Freeman to get his facts right …
You will be aware that Mr Williams’ appearance before the Select Committee has only just become public knowledge, and that EDDC has given such an interesting occasion on the national stage no publicity at all. I and many others have to be grateful for the vigilance of other local people for any knowledge of this, and even the four district councillors I have asked about it had not been told.
Please advise:
1. If/when the Overview and Scrutiny Committee was appraised of the missing voters and lack of canvassing in the East Devon District.
2. If/when the Overview and Scrutiny Committee was made aware of the Returning Officer’s appearance before the Parliamentary Select Committee on voter engagement
3. If/when this matter will come before the Overview and Scrutiny Committee for discussion.
4. If it is not the intention of the Committee to bring this matter forward, please confirm this.
Yours faithfully,
Paul Arnott
cc Vice Chairman O&S Committee, Cllr G Troman.
d
Responsibilities of Returning Officers
Click to access EPE-LGE-Part-A-Returning-Officer-role-and-responsibilities.pdf
2.8 While you can appoint one or more persons to discharge any or all of your functions, you cannot delegate your personal responsibility for delivering the election. Further information on the appointment of deputies can be found in Part B – Planning and organisation.
2.9 You are also subject to breach of official duty provisions. This means that if you or your appointed deputies are, without reasonable cause, guilty of any act or omission in breach of official duty you (and/or they) are liable on summary conviction to a fine not exceeding £5,000.
When will the EDDC Overview and Scrutiny Committee discuss the missing voters?
Or will it get kicked into the (now very long) grass the same way the investigation into the East Devon Business Forum was?
Express and Echo takes up our story of the missing 6,000 voters
Stop Press: The missing 6,000 voters – EDDC Chief Executive Mark Williams called before Parliamentary Select Committee to explain himself next week
EDA exclusively broke the story of the district’s 6,000 missing voters in July this year and on the fiasco that followed (where very-belated attempt to recruit 10 house-to-house canvassers resulted in only 2 taking up the offer)
According to
http://www.theyworkforyou.com/calendar/?d=2014-10-13#cal41011
and here:
http://www.parliament.uk/business/committees/committees-a-z/commons-select/political-and-constitutional-reform-committee/news/voter-engagement-13th-evidence-session/
EDDC CEO Mark Williams (also the district’s official Returning Officer)has been called to give evidence on
13 October 2014
to the
Parliamentary Select Committee on Political and Constitutional Reform
who are investigating “Voter engagement in the UK”.
Extract from site here:
Political and Constitutional Reform:
Voter engagement in the UK 5:15 pm
Witnesses: Mark Williams, Chief Executive and Electoral Registration Officer for East Devon District Council and Kevin Finan, Chief Executive, Mid Devon District Council; Roger Casale, Chair, New Europeans and Samia Badani, New Europeans
This committee appears regularly on the UK Parliament Channel on TV and Chris Ruane Mp, who has taken a keen i terest in our district, does not pull any punches. And, since he has been extensively briefed about the situation in East Devon, we do not anticipate that Mr Williams will receive an easy ride.
If it is not televised, a transcript of his performance and that of the CEO of Mid-Devon (also heavily criticised by the Electoral Commission) will be available a few days later.
Watch this space yet again!
And to remind you of what Mr Williams said in response to a public question about this, see:
THE MISSING 6,000 VOTERS: A PERSONAL PERSPECTIVE FROM AN EDA BLOG COMMENTATOR
http://eastdevonalliance.org/2014/07/
where the (in)famous quote: … “in any major change process it is not where you start from that counts but where you end-up” was uttered by the CEO as an explanation of why the lack house-to-house canvassing of missing voters in the previous three years led to the loss of more than 6,000 voters on the register of electors at the recent European Parliament elections.
Has the government abandoned the idea of a 5/6 year land supply?
An interesting perspective from an experienced planning lawyer:
“You can tell there’s an election coming. Even though ministers and their advisers are well aware that there is an urgent need to release land, including Green Belt land, to meet the requirements for housing land, De-CLoG has issued a statement in which they once again trot out the old mantra that, once established, Green Belt boundaries should only be altered in exceptional cases.
Eric Pickles is quoted as saying: “Protecting our precious green belt must be paramount. Local people don’t want to lose their countryside to urban sprawl, or see the vital green lungs around their towns and cities lost to unnecessary development.” [Translation: “We know the NIMBYs are wrong really, but they might go and vote for UKIP, so at all costs we are going to say and do whatever it takes to get the Tory defectors back into fold, even though it makes a complete nonsense of our pledge to get more houses built. Getting ourselves re-elected has to come first.”]
Uncle Eric and his friends have suddenly re-discovered ‘Localism’ and are claiming that “Local Plans are now at the heart of the reformed, democratic planning system, so councils can decide where development should and shouldn’t go in consultation with local people.”.
Planning officers can naturally be expected to take a more objective view of these matters, because they have to work out a way of planning for the housing needs of their localities, but this had led them (unsurprisingly) to recommend to their authorities that some Green Belt land will have to be released in order to meet objectively assessed targets (even though these are no longer set by central government.) But to counter this, the government’s on-line guidance has been amended to read that assessing need is just the first stage in the preparation of a council’s local plan, and that in assessing the suitability of land to meet the identified need for housing over the plan period, they “should take account of any constraints such as Green Belt which indicate that development should be restricted and which may restrain the ability of an authority to meet its need”.
This makes it quite clear that having objectively assessed housing need in their area, LPAs should feel free to ignore it, if is politically inexpedient to release green field sites (and particularly some parts of the Green Belt) in order to allocate sufficient land to meet their housing need. If this advice is to be taken at face value, it would appear that the government is abandoning the requirement that LPAs must demonstrate that they have a five-year housing land supply, plus a 5% margin (six years’ supply in cases where council’s have failed to produce sufficient housing land in the past, in the form of committed schemes) if they can excuse themselves by pointing to constraints such as the Green Belt (or any other plausible excuses). It also seems to let them off the hook of having to co-operate with neighbouring authorities in the provision of housing land, even though the 2011 Act requires them to do.
This is bad news for house-builders, and it is bad news for first-time buyers. It also makes a nonsense of recent legislative and policy changes which were directed at securing the provision of adequate housing land. But then, as I said, we are now in the run-up to the General Election, and I did predict a major U-turn sooner or later in this pre-election period. This latest ministerial statement seems to herald that U-turn, and there will no doubt be more to come, as an increasingly panic-stricken Tory Party thrashes about trying to find something, anything, that might secure a few more votes and get them across the winning line next May.”
Source: http://planninglawblog.blogspot.co.uk/
Ottery Community Hospital: does the left hand know what the right hand is doing?
No knowledge of “The Knowledge”
So where’s last week’s edition of the EDDC councillors newsletter “The Knowledge” usually published each Friday? No sign of it so far.
Or is it another thing that is now being kept secret from the public?
Source: http://www.eastdevon.gov.uk/the_knowledge
And late on Tuesday evening, lo, it appears – just needed a little nudge perhaps?
Who passed the planning application for the Conservative Party notice board in West Hill?
Current MP Hugo Swire and prodpective candidate Claire Wright have had a spat about who said what about the local heealth service changes in East Devon
As can be seen from comments, it was suggested that she puts her riposte in the same place (by the local shop) so people can judge for themselves who said what. However, Councillor Roger Giles pointed out that is was a Conservative Party notice board so it is unlikely that she would be allowed to post a reply on it.
Try as we may we have been unable to find any planning application for this notice board on the EDDC website Planning Applications Online service.
Can anyone pount us to the planning application number and details of where the siting of this notice board was agreed, when, by whom (was it by officer delegation, for example or by committee) and what conditions, if any, were placed on it?
Is it owned by the shop or someone else?
East Devon Watch 