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Monthly Archives: November 2014
EDDC Deputy Leader rails against failure to provide details of finances, and about secrecy.
Cllr Andrew Moulding has said not a word about the same issues regarding Knowle office relocation.
But in his other role as a Devon County Councillor for Axminster, he seems greatly exercised by them. See him in action at this webcam link to DCC’s recent debate on the NHS failure to provide details of the finances for the community health provision rationalisation while maintaining secrecy.http://www.devoncc.public-i.tv/core/portal/webcast_interactive/118538 ( Just click on Cllr Moulding’s name, for his speech near the beginning of the meeting.)
Dying supermarkets: a plague on the landscape
Big supermarkets may be dying but they leave a plague on the landscape.
Sir Simon Jenkins has written another interesting, though controversial, article in The Guardian on planning. This time on the death of the supermarket, how the High Street may evolve in the face of on-line shopping and what role the planners should play.
Here are the highlights:
“Big supermarkets are dying. ….. Some may become warehouses for online distribution centres. Most will languish as cheap stores and homelessness shelters, like the high streets they ruined. Some will be replaced by bleak, ill-sited housing estates, part of the scarred, blotched landscape that is the coalition’s most visible legacy to the British environment.”
“Planning was certainly too rigid, but non-planning is far worse. The leads and lags of a free market in land impose huge “external costs” on the community. It was clearly wrong to allow an oversupply of out-of-town sites for competitive retailing, with no thought given to the impact on city centres or on local communities in general. The anti-green waste of energy, building material and infrastructure was never considered. The gods of the market triumphed.”
“There is no mystery here. If you want to kill a town centre, offer out-of-town sites to Tesco and Sainsbury’s – and build roads to help them. Thatcher, Blair and Cameron did just this. Shoppers had “market choice” for a year or two, then saw their towns “hollow out” and collapse. ……..This is not a free market, it is a stupid market.”
“Land is Britain’s most precious resource. The point of planning is to economise its usefulness. At present, smart planning ought to be thinking ahead of the boom in online shopping. What mistakes might there be in pandering to its gargantuan appetites? What are the implications of every street jammed with home delivery lorries? What of every suburb blighted with distribution centres, supplied by giant hangars littering every motorway?”
“Markets go in cycles.
The job of planning is to even them out, not to exaggerate boom and bust. The out-of-town supermarket era has been brief, barely a quarter century old, but it has done as much damage to the countryside as it has to Britain’s urban cohesion. Its inflexible floor plates and characterless exteriors make even the ghosts of the industrial revolution look picturesque. They will blight the landscape for decades.”
“I am sure many big supermarkets will survive. The convenience ones in town are booming. The Institute of Grocery Distribution predicts they will grow by a third in the next five years. The law of futurology applies to them as to all once-doomed relics of the past, such as books, newspapers, the church, live theatre and jazz. Booms burn out, but every fashion finds its level and something of it survives.”
“I believe town and village centres will find a new role in the post-digital economy of “live experience”. Convenience itself has a value. High streets supply such personal services as coffee bars, beauty salons, tattoo parlours and gyms. After them will come market stalls, foodie counters, pop-up shops and junk vendors, the live activities of the new “smart city”.”
“The high street has no right to eternity but it can supply the framework in which a “small society” flourishes, far below the metropolitan scanner of the coalition’s big society. The high street should embody the ideal of a regulated free market. They tried to kill it, but what a mess we have made of bringing it back.”
Full article here:
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/nov/20/big-supermarkets-dying-plague-landscape-retail
Affordable housing changes will be “catastrophic for the countryside” and “people don’t like living next to social tenants”
“Nick Chase from ACRE said: “This change would have a catastrophic effect on the numbers of affordable houses coming forward for local communities.
“It also flies in the face of allowing local communities to take responsibility for the numbers and types of houses that they want.” The organisation wants villages with a population of less than 3000 to be exempt.”
For the first time the heads of all ten National Parks in England have come together to personally sign a letter to the government. It says the measure “puts at risk” their affordable housing supply.
Ghost towns and villages
They believe that in rural areas, the open market is already failing to provide enough homes that people on average salaries can buy or rent.
According to Chief Executive of the Yorkshire Dales National Park, leaving housing purely to the open market will lead to “ghost towns and villages“.
A developer went on to say:
” …many people didn’t want to buy or rent a house next to a social tenant. To get permission to build eight homes on a site, his company recently had to make one an affordable home. “There’s an issue of saleability. Sales on either side of the social house were at a reduced price because of the stigma attached,” he explained.
“Transparency”: a joke at our expense
This week’s EDDC “Knowledge” e-newspaper shows 12 forthcoming meetings at EDDC:
7 are being held in secret (including a new group “Capital Strategy and Allocation”
3 are open to the public – Cabinet (though some parts of the agenda may be secret), the Planning Inspections (which must be open to the public by law) and the “Value of Trees Task and Finish Forum” and
2 are cancelled as not being needed (Licensing and Enforcement).
So, the vast majority of council business is being conducted in secret, with no published agendas and no public minutes. We have no idea what they discuss. In theory, these “groups” and “think tanks” do not make decisions BUT they do decide what aspects of their discussions they take forward to (supposedly) open committees. So, how do they decide what goes forward and what gets dropped if they don’t make decisions.
Transparency? You (or rather they) are having a laugh – on us
“Grey” seaside towns in the southwest
And still we build Cranbrook and luxury housing.
“Torbay MP, Adrian Sanders, a member of the all-party group for coastal communities, said the findings highlighted the need to redress the age imbalance.
He warned that if action was not taken, some towns could struggle to cope with the pressures of an ageing population.
“These coastal locations strongly appeal to older residents looking to retire, but this comes with increased social costs,” he said. Over 65s are coming to these communities at a time when they are less economically active but have growing needs which must be met by local services. While they can be a fantastic asset to their local community, in the long term we have to look at creating a more mixed demographic in these communities. We need to attract and retain more of the skilled, working age population.”
The ONS report, which looked at 274 coastal towns in England and Wales with populations of more than 1,000, identified several South West communities as having particularly high concentrations of retirement age inhabitants.
These included Charmouth in Dorset and Newton Ferrers in Devon, where 42% of residents are 65 and over, and Sidmouth and Budleigh Salterton in south east Devon, where numbers were around 41%. This is compared to the national average of around 16%.
The study also found many seaside communities suffered from lower than average employment rates and higher economic inactivity rates, as well as higher numbers of workers in part-time employment.
Mr Sanders said that these towns were in desperate need of better housing, infrastructure and educational provisions.”
“You need good schools and colleges to ensure the local labour market can offer employers the right skills. Many businesses find they have to move out of smaller communities when they want to expand because they can’t find the right employees,” he said.
“You also need the best possible connectivity, both in terms of rail and road as well as digital and communication. But most important is the housing policy – you need to ensure that young people who can work locally can also live locally.
“We need more regulated rent, secure tenancy housing in order to create stronger, enduring communities. In my opinion, this kind of accommodation needs to account for half of all new developments.”
Westcountry coastal towns have some of the highest proportions of private sector rentals of any location in the UK, according to the ONS study, even outstripping areas of London and Manchester.
Landbanking sites with planning permission to keep lack of 5 year land supply
A new wheeze on the part of developers which a Conservative MP is annoyed about and which explains a lot. Oddly, the government has never plugged this loophole:
“… I do not pretend Test Valley is unique in facing the challenge of a five year housing land supply which appears to be a somewhat movable target, and I have noticed how successive developers seek to demonstrate their rivals’ schemes are, for whatever reason, undeliverable, only to then appear to struggle to deliver their own when it is granted permission, usually on appeal. Of course, there will always be some planning reasons why schemes are not developed at the rate initially predicted, but these should not be commercial reasons, where sites are delayed or developed only painfully slowly. In many cases these tactics can simply be a ploy to prove the local authority does not have a five year supply, thus improving the chances of yet another speculative site being granted on appeal.
Test Valley currently has granted as much as seven years of planning permissions, yet slow build rates, or in some cases no building at all, mean that each and every speculative application can point to the rate of delivery and suggest there is not a 5 year supply. In some cases we have even seen developers arguing against themselves, that a site they previously had demonstrated would be more deliverable than a rival’s, now for whatever reason is not, so they need to bring forward yet another one.”
Planning decision quashed because important information not released to the public
Today a wind turbine … tomorrow … ?
“…“Local authorities would do well to note the strictness of the test here: breaches of the access to information provisions of the 1972 Local Government Act, and of the undertakings in a Statement of Community Involvement, will mean decisions taken are liable to be quashed upon challenge, unless the decision would inevitably have been the same without the breaches. Inevitability is a hard thing to prove.” ..”
‘Politicians are all the same, except on rural issues’…says today’s Western Morning News
WMN invites its readers to send in their comments to the newspaper, on today’s hot topic article. See 
New light on Knowle, thanks to Mark Williams
See today’s press release from Save Our Sidmouth http://saveoursidmouth.com/2014/11/20/chief-executive-sheds-new-light-on-knowle/
What questons will councillors have for Mr Cohen this afternoon?
At the Audit and Governance, 2.30 pm, there will be an oral update from Mr Cohen on relocation. So, it’s another opportunity for our representatives to ensure with their questioning that the office move project is not built on shifting sands.
Oddly, EDDC’s latest, and last, edition of their glossy propaganda brochure, ‘Connect’ , doesn’t mention the Knowle at all. Should it have been renamed, ‘Disconnect’ ? And will what Council Leader, Paul Diviani, calls ‘our ground-breaking East Devon app and our connectED e-magazine’, do any better?
Affordable homes? In your dreams!
But we have known this for a long time in East Devon where even enormous schemes are allowed to build without any affordable homes at all:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-30009901?
though coincidentally it appears to be the case in South Somerset too:
Claire Wright’s odds continue to improve (for her!)
Started at 66/1 a few days ago, dropped almost immediately to 33/1, soon after that 25/1 and, quoted earlier today 16/1.
Note that betting companies do not routinely give such odds to idependent candidates – this pattern is quite exceptional.
May be time for those who do these things to place theiir bets before it gets to evens!
Exmouth: yet another questionable “consultation”
It seems the word “consultation” has a different meaning in East Devon compared to other areas.
Yesterday, 18th November 2014, a ‘public consultation’ about a proposal to build 150 houses in land off Marley Road, took place in Brixington Community Church Exmouth.
We are told that anyone going there expecting to learn much about the proposals was likely to have been disappointed. The exhibition consisted of around six display boards and there were a number of representatves of Nathaniel Lichfield and Partners Ltd who had laid on the event.
Their event did not get off to a good start when it was learned that
an oak (?) tree situated at what is to be the site entrance had been felled very recently. None of the representatives present could offer any explanation, or say who was responsible. Local comment was to the effect that the tree, with a diameter of around seven feet, was in a healthy condition prior to felling. Many present felt that this showed contempt for local opinion and the local ecology.
Many residents raised the issue of flooding,and drainage. This is already a problem resulting in run off coming down from the area and across Dinan Way at times. We were told that this would be dealt with by the use of attenuation tanks, devices that collect water and then release it gradually. The suggestion was that EDDC would ensure that no flooding or drainage problems were generated. Comment was made that the same promises were made to the residents of Feniton but have proved pretty worthless.
It transpires that this site, and an adjacent one to the north, were put forward to EDDC a couple of years ago as land to be included in the Local Plan for housing. Neither made it to any form of the provisional local plan.
Many will be aware that because EDDC have failed so miserably to produce a local plan that the Inspector will approve, that this has left a gap in planning practice which has, and continues to be exploited by developers. Many at the exhibition were left in no doubt that this proposal sought to exploit the mess that local planning is in. It was suggested that one of the exhibition team admitted as much.
That another plot, north of the one subject to this plan, was seen as having development potential, leads one to suspect that if this is approved a further one may follow. This would mean that The Eagle development for 350 houses at Goodmore Farm might be followed by another 150 here, and then an unknown number above.
In answer to a question about the likely price of ‘affordable houses’, the agents could not give an answer.
The exhibition provided no information to take away and digest. The consultants have provided no website though comments can be submitted to marleyroad@nlpplanning.com
More development between Exeter and Cranbrook – when will it stop?
More development planned in the EDDC district:
The plans for 900 homes on fields north of Tithebarn Lane and west of Mosshayne Lane, have been submitted by land owners Mr and Mrs Gent and developers, Eagle One Homes Ltd.
The plans also include a primary school.
Building is already under way on a 450-home development, including shops, a primary school and a 250-space park-and-ride on fields at Old Park Farm, Pinn Hill, submitted by AE Stuart & Sons.
And in April, permission was granted for a 350-house development for phase two of Old Park Farm at Pinn Hill, submitted by AE Stuart & Sons.
Another 430-house development, including retail space of up to 240sqm and a 60-bed care home at Pinn Court Farm, Pinncourt Lane, submitted by Millwood Homes Devon Ltd, was also approved at the same meeting.
At the time, residents and councillors voiced concerns that the two developments were considered a few days before a Government inspector made his ruling on the Local Plan public.
But a spokesperson for the council previously explained that it “made sense” for the applications to be heard together.
He said that whereas before, the “limiting factor” on the sites has been the surrounding highway infrastructure, the applications have “overcome” that restraint and proposed alterations to the Pinhoe roundabouts “have freed up greater capacity on the highway network to accommodate additional dwellings”.
At the meeting Liberal Democrat East Devon district ward member for Broadclyst Councillor Derek Button said: “This land is the lungs of Exeter and should never be built on.”
Rural broadband: another government inquiry asks for input
For those in rural areas struggling to understand why they are being left behind in the digital race, here is an explanation of the problem and a chance to tell the government what you think about the mess we are in:
“Country Life” magazine wades into the “sustainable” development in the countryside argument
“Growth” in “non-metropolitan areas”
aka “Development in rural areas”
Needless to say, the Local Government Asdociation has its own view of localism and devolution:
http://www.local.gov.uk/documents/10180/6193395/How+the+Other+Half+Grows+(lo+res).pdf/b1556a61-b8c5-4676-8df7-e3ee3090eaef
And now Hugo Swire sorts out residents parking in Sidmouth …. er … not!
His press release starts out, somewhat strangely:
“Shoppers will lose out on 35 town-centre parking spaces under plans to appease elderly residents, who blasted a decision to treble their annual permits fee to £1,800.
[The dictionary defines “appease” as “to make or preserve peace with a nation, group, or person by giving in to their demands, or to relieve a problem”. Sounds like he thinks the residents are being somewhat unreasonable.]
This is Hugo’s solution (we assume he had some hand in this solution as he has said on his blog that he had words with EDDC before it came out):
“East Devon District Council (EDDC) is now proposing to offer current Mill Street users a special permit for 35 of the bays at the Ham East car park.
This would mean they would not be guaranteed a space, but they could stay as long as they wanted once they found one.
Another option would be to buy a regular permit, which allowed the holder to park for three hours at a time, but required the car to be moved three times a day. “
Only EDDC could come up with such a plan that will satisfy neither residents nor shoppers!
Keep up the good work Hugo!
Source: http://www.hugoswire.org.uk/news/ham-parking-spaces-go-residents
Scrutiny MUST be separated from Executive functions
because if it isn’t this sort of thing that can happen:
East Devon Watch 