Claire Wright asked Hugo Swire to speak up for more equitable treatment for Devon when the annual settlements for Authorities was debated on 10 February, citing many examples of how the county is treated as a “poor relation” compared to other areas, such as:
“The allowance for school children is £300 per head per year less than for children elsewhere. Will it be cut again? The council has said that the school crossings budget must be cut by £100,000 per year in the next two years.”
Mr Swire and Mr Parish did not speak in the debate and the settlement for Devon (and other authorities)was voted through by them without comment.
East Devon Watch 
It would be interesting to ask Hugo and his well educated chums how they justify treating our children as worth less than those from elsewhere. Claire mentions the proposed cut to the school crossings budget. This means that in practice either some patrols will be discontinued or manned by volunteers or the school will have to find the funds out of the budget they receive to educate the children. This is not the first time the money allocated for our children has been attacked in this manner. When Devon CC outsourced its school meals provision, without tender, to the ‘joint venture company’ Devon Norse the schools were told of the change and of a 30% cost hike. For the school where I was a parent governor to have accepted the change this meant either passing that cost on to the families, with a consequent drop in children having a meal, or to absorb the cost within the budget. Since the school was below the size where taking over full responsibility was cost effective we would have been hamstrung but for the hard work of the head teacher in negotiating an arrangement with a larger school in the town. Even then we had to ‘prove’ to the satisfaction of those who had put us in this position that our arrangements would be adequate. Some schools ceased providing a meal, including two who had featured in a River Cottage programme about improving school meals! The schools who withdrew from the provision were also made responsible for any redundancy costs. Comically the original announcement of the joint venture made claims about how the equity was shared between Devon and Norse, and how the profits would be shared! Q. How do you dream of making profit out of school meals? A. By compelling schools where possible to remain in the system and forcing them to suck the funds out of another budget. This is a creative evolution of the process started when pension funds were stolen to finance privatisation. When David Cameron tells us that per capita allowances are guaranteed he doesn’t mention this furtive mining of the funds allocated to our children. Every politician involved in these tricks at whatever level of government might as well be drinking a toast to Robert Maxwell, who showed them the way.
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This says it all. It appears we are here to serve the career of our present MP, not he us. A more demonstrable fingers up to us in Devon is difficult to find.
Whatever the local differences we may have between us, more and more are telling me, getting rid of this man is a growingly wider held joint priority.
If past experience is anything to go by, he will have gone on to enjoy being courted at the Tory Black and White fundraiser where they seem to accept donations from anyone . Last year Mr Swire acted as auctioneer .
See, for some of the guests;- http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/678bc932-b084-11e4-9b8e-00144feab7de.html#axzz3RQexZgxf
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Perhaps if our MP and his family lived in East Devon, he might have more of an attachment. But when your children go to private school in the Home Counties, he doesn’t have any vested interest in ensuring the South West is treated equably!
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One shocking fact about Devon Norse is the EDDC spent an astonishing amount of money on a legal action which might have been designed to protect their customer base. The Norse part is actually owned by Norfolk County Council. It is their outsourcing template. Before Devon Norse was established, but with Devon’s property division already outsourced as its sister company NPS South West, the Boundaries Commission made a preliminary recommendation that both Exeter and Norwich should be granted unitary authority status, which would have taken their schools and other properties out of county control. Somehow EDDC spent an unbelievable amount of money objecting to this on the basis of lack of consultation. Consultation being a matter of principle to them. A normal person or organisation in a situation like this might just say to the commissioner: “we don’t believe you have followed your obligations to consult. We put you on notice that if you firm up these proposals as your recommendation we will object on this basis”. But our financially responsible masters decided to throw I believe a substantial six figure sum at it, at this premature stage. Now why would a district authority consider itself to be the appropriate body or sufficiently resourced to do this? Surely this would be an issue for the county to take up if at all, as with Norfolk, the partners in the action and in the joint venture companies. However, if Devon and Norfolk pursued this together would they also have been obliged to declare their existing and growing commercial relationship? Fortunately the principled folk at EDDC were there to pursue it on our behalf, and with our money. There is a problem though. The person at EDDC who boldly drove this action forward was and is also a County Councillor, so do not the same obligations of disclosure apply? They were not observed. I only became aware of this commercial relationship through serving as a parent governor at my son’s school and making the link in my own mind when the respective companies were involved in our decision making. Up to this point I had assumed the action to be purely a foolish waste of money. How many councillors are school governors? How many councillors and officers at both county and district were aware of this relationship when the legal action was being pursued? Other than to protect the potential future profits of this relationship what possible gain could have been envisaged from this legal action? Was appropriate advice on the potential conflict ever offered or sought? As a postscript the first chief executive of Devon Norse was a former senior education officer who had assumed a role overseeing outsourcing opportunities.
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