Cornwall seems to have a better understanding of the pros and cons than East Devon:
Sustainability of high growth
Click to access Sustainability-Appraisal-of-growth-options-overall-analysis-of-trends.pdf
Monthly Archives: March 2015
Where to catch up with Claire Wright in April 2015
Check, as more venues may be added:
1 April 2015 Sidmouth election public meeting 20:00
St Francis Church Hall, Woolbrook
11 April 2015 Street events – Sidmouth, Newton Poppleford and Sidbury 10:00
Come and say hello!
At Sidmouth (outside Waitrose)
At 10am Newton Poppleford (near war memorial)
At 11am Sidbury (near Red Lion
12 April 2015 Day of action on planning – Sidmouth 15:00
Knowle gardens, Sidmouth
16 April 2015 Exmouth election public meeting 19:00
Exmouth Rugby Club
17 April 2015 Hustings – Exmouth (Christians Together) 19:30
Glenorchy Church Hall
28 April 2015 Hustings – Sidmouth (Vision Group) 20:30
St Francis Church Hall, Woolbrook
More houses … more luxury bathrooms … higher prices!
Here is an article about (current) EDDC leader taking about the increase in housing numbers for the district:
and here is one Devon company’s view on this “high frowth” in the same article:
“Devon isn’t all just beautiful beaches and tourist attractions though – any potential tenants looking to move to Devon will want to see how modern and contemporary the area is. This new housing is perfectly set to frame how modern and contemporary life in Devon is. Savvy property developers will be looking to install luxury bathrooms and luxury items such as illuminated mirrors into these new houses in order to increase the asking price.”
Sunday Politics South West this morning
Soundbites from Hugo Swire
… [yes we should have a secret ballot for Speaker] – why?
“the Speaker has not been favourable to us”!
Hugo thinks the Coalition has been a success
He tried to talk about his own Constituency but the presenter pulled him up – not what they are talking about
Hugo says people should know when they vote what the outcome should be (we wish: no-one mentioned the National Planning Policy Framework and its effect in giving us a developer free-for-all!)
Loves the “Growth Point”
Ben Bradshaw: the Speaker did a good job, he challenged the Government and Bradshaw called Cameron “arrogant and incompetent”.
There was a feature on Lympstone’s Neighbourhood Plan.
Bradshaw in favour of them, local communities must decide but must have mo no absolute veto.
Presumption in favour of development: Hugo says a Local Plan SHOULD (not WILL) stop inappropriate development. Ben Bradshaw pointed out that EDDC has no Local Plan and so is building up to the Exeter boundary whether Exeter likes it or not.
The programme then re-ran Hugo’s stupid joke. “Just a money raising gag”.
Ben Bradshaw said Hugo should realise he could be recorded and his remarks reinforced the view that some MPs are out of touch, the St Ives LibDem prospective candidate agreed with him.
It is on BBC iPlayer and begins about 38 minutes into the programme.
EDDC Tories out of synch – with ALL General Election candidates …
… at a recent hustings meeting in Sidmouth ALL General Election candidates agreed East Devon District Council should not have forced through a rushed relocation decision in the dying days of its dying majority.
Strange things can happen at a General Election …
Independent on the march
In East Devon the Liberal Democrats are the traditional runners up to the Tory safe seat, but with the slump in their fortunes nationally a local independent politician is making the running at the expense of the retired diplomat Stuart Mole for the LibDems. Claire Wright from West Hill is already a County and District Councillor and has a strong power base in the Ottery St Mary area, but the question is whether she can gain ground in the wider countryside during the campaign. Government Minister Hugo Swire enjoyed a majority of more than 9,000 in the last election so it would be quite a shock if Wright was to have a major impact, although strange things happen in election campaigns.
Affordable housing figures lowest since 2000
“Spending on affordable housing is at its lowest point for 14 years.
Latest figures show it stood at £965million last year – the same as it was in 2000.
But the Tories were so embarrassed about the stats they waited five months to put them out. …
… Labour’s Chris Ruane tabled a Commons question in November asking ministers to provide details of their spending.
Housing minister Brandon Lewis finally answered as Parliament was dissolved last week for the General Election.”
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/affordable-homes-spending-lowest-2000-5418836
46 MPs rent out their homes in London and claim expenses for hotels
Does this press release conform to purdah rules?
“Pssst….know any good rubbish men?
The search is on for a suitable service provider for East Devon District Council’s new recycling and waste services contract – due to expire in March 2016.
The procurement process began with a ‘Get to know East Devon’ bidders day event at Knowle, which interested contractors were invited to attend.
The aim was to introduce the area of East Devon to potential bidders and to explain the importance of the contract, as well as its aims and objectives.
Most importantly, participants were given crucial insight into our core requirements: Meeting customer demand, keeping quality high, adding the collection of cardboard and mixed plastics as a minimum and reducing costs.
East Devon’s residual waste sent for disposal is the third lowest in the country and missed collections rate is a mere 0.0005%. The current service costs the householder only £1.30 a week
Full details of the service can be found on our website: http://eastdevon.gov.uk/recycling-and-rubbish/.”
Doesn’t it sound rather celebratory with the words “mere” and “only”, rather than plainly factual?
Maybe time to tighten up a bit – the owl is watching!
Stage-managed party politics
Timothy Garton Ash in today’s Guardian:
“One reason for this [political posturing] is that so many MPs depend so directly on the party leaders. At the last count, there were roughly 150 ministers, parliamentary undersecretaries and parliamentary private secretaries. If you add a similar number for those shadowing them on the opposition benches, that brings you close to half the lower house (even allowing for some of those ministers being peers). How many will step out of line to ask a critical question?
Everything is coordinated by an army of special political advisers – known as spads; hence “the spadocracy” – and heaven help the aspiring politician who departs from the script to say something original interesting or (perish the thought) honest.
… Between the childish Punch and Judy of PMQs and the PR Stalinism of the spads, the substance of deliberative democracy is lost. …
… The scrutiny of legislation in the lower house is often woefully inadequate. We depend on unelected lords and then on unelected judges to defend our civil liberties against badly worded and over-broad legislation. These bills have usually been produced as a kneejerk reaction to some event or popular outcry, on the lines of the great satirical syllogism: “Something must be done; this is something; therefore we must do this.” The best select committees do a fine job of cross-examining the powerful, both from government and the private sector, but they need more funding and staff.
And then, of course, there is corruption. When the scandal about MPs fiddling their expenses broke a few years ago, a cartoon showed a pinstriped gent fending off an angry crowd in front of the Houses of Parliament saying, “No, no, I’m a banker!” Call me naive, but I did find it shocking to see two former foreign secretaries caught on camera by a journalistic sting offering their services to a bogus Hong Kong-based company for about £5,000 a day. Yes, money howls still more loudly through American politics; but we don’t want to descend to that level, do we? … ”
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/mar/27/parliament-lawmakers-pmqs-special-advisers
Monitoring Officer – some questions
Should a Monitoring Officer also be a council’s Legal Officer?
Mr Gordon Lennox is currently EDDC’s Principal Solicitor and appears to have had enough work to keep him fully busy in the job for some years. Can he also discharge the role of Monitoring Officer – a role which has kept others rather busy recently?
With the relocation now in train (or not depending on future decisions) won’t he have lots of legal work to do – or maybe he’s getting an assistant or two.
On a wider scale: Is there something of a mismatch in being the council’s Principal Solicitor AND Monitoring Officer given that the former is dedicated to guarding the interests of the council according to the law and a Monitoring Officer should be a neutral figure representing fairness. Do these always coincide?
The wider question is: how did the transposition of roles in EDDC take place and why has the Monitoring Officer’s job not been externally publicised since Ms Lyon left last year. Has it been subsumed into the Principal Solicitors job or is it still a separate one? Were councillors made aware of the change? Have any parts of either job description changed?
There is now a rule, it is said, that Acting posts should only be filled for a maximum of one year, after which the job must be filled permanently or deleted as a job – is this an Acting post (again) or not? If so, for how long?
And has Standards Committee been made aware of the changes?
The Monitoring Officer is the only person the general public can approach when they fear the Code of Conduct has been breached – we need to know what to expect.
New Monitoring Officer for EDDC?
Will EDDC have three Monitoring Officers in the space of a year? A specially stressful job in an authority which engenders an unusually high number of complaints, perhaps? Or simply a natural process?
Rumour has it that Henry Gordon Lennox is now poised to take over from interim MO, Ian Clarke, shared with South Somerset District Council.
If so, wonder when and where the job would have been advertised? And how many people applied?
Can you be sort-of but not really maybe whipped? Or was it just a birthday present for William Hague?
Tories tried to get the Speaker of the House (a Tory they seem to hate) removed by secret ballot as their last act of this Parliament (see post below).
Today’s Guardian reports that David Cameron rushed back to the House to vote for secrecy.
Were Tories whipped?
“Tory MPs say that although it was nominally a free vote, a three-line whip was imposed to be in Parliament. At a parliamentary meeting, Tory MPs were told it was Hague’s birthday and he deserved the present of not being defeated”.
Now we know what model our EDDC Tories follow!
Inappropriate remarks about Parliamentary Candidate, by EDDC Chief Executive
Extraordinarily, there have been two Extra Ordinary Meetings of EDDC on consecutive days this week. On Wednesday evening (25 March), councillors attended a hastily-called decisive meeting about Knowle relocation. The very next afternoon (26 March), with similar rapidity, a meeting about the revised Local Plan was fixed, with the aim of approving it.
A correspondent tells us,
‘At the second of these meetings, Cllr Claire Wright had moved two very sensible amendments which the Chief Executive did not appear to like. The first was to ask the Inspector to allow two weeks more time for public consultation on the changes which were to be agreed at this meeting. The proposal had been to allow six weeks from 1st April. As was said by Hon Alderman Vivienne Ash, this would virtually disqualify many parish councils from commenting, because of the election ‘purdah’ period in which they would not be meeting. Councillors accepted the amendment, and so it was agreed to ask the Inspector to increase the public consultation period from six, to eight weeks.
Cllr Claire Wright’s second amendment was to invite the authors of the report on which EDDC was being asked to increase housing numbers, to a meeting in the near future to explain their findings and give members the opportunity to question them. Cllr Roger Giles backed the idea, adding that two opportunities for questions to the housing numbers experts, had already been missed this week (namely at the special Development Management Committee on 23 March, and ,indeed, at the current meeting (26 March).
It was at this point that the Chief Executive made what could be taken as totally inappropriate remarks. Arguing against Cllr Wright’s amendment, Mark Williams referred to “Councillor Wright`s parliamentary ambitions” and then veered off course, lecturing the rather bemused assembly about about the Exeter wards of Topsham, and St Loye`s being part of the East Devon constituency.
Cllr Giles made a point of order, and protested that what the Chief Exec was saying was irrelevant to the debate and inappropriate.’
Many of East Devon’s electorate, who will be living with the consequences of the Local Plan, would strongly agree with Cllr Giles.
Anyone recall this Local Plan consultants report being discussed?
Government to make it easier (cheaper) to sack Chief Executives and other senior staff
Devon and Cornwall and Dorset police areas to merge services
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-32079079
Might we also now have one Police and Crime Commissioner, one Chief Constable , etc and use the very large amount of money we would save to fund more beat officers?
Tribunal dismisses EDDC’s appeal: secret Knowle relocation papers must be revealed.
More to follow when we have details.
Local Plans: with the same figures, Mid-Devon opts for low growth in housing numbers East Devon opts for high growth
AFTER FOUR YEARS OF BATTLING THE SIDFORD INDUSTRIAL ESTATE IS STRUCK FROM LOCAL PLAN
The hugely controversial industrial estate, proposed at Sidford was today struck from EDDC’s Local Plan, following a proposal by Cllrs Stuart Hughes and Graham Troman.
The five hectare site was inserted into the Local Plan at the last minute when I was a member of the panel back in 2011.
It has taken local people four years of campaigning for the council to finally agree to delete it. Many votes of a similar nature have been taken in the past and have failed. Today’s got through.
The move took place at today’s extraordinary full council meeting to discuss revisions to the local plan.
I blasted the council for opting YET AGAIN for unevidenced and huge levels of growth that are contrary to consultants recommendations.
How many consultants have to tell EDDC that the right way forward is low growth before they actually listen? The answer is they never will listen. They (who I am not entirely sure) wants big big levels of development in East Devon – and so shall it be.
That is, until the planning inspector takes a look at it and wonders what on earth is going on.
A press release was issued by EDDC earlier this month which contained a grossly untrue statement about the planning inspector recommending the levels of growth that EDDC have opted for.
The planning inspector made no such recommendation. This was a disgraceful attempt to try and fool the public into believing that EDDC is doing the will of the planning inspector, who threw out the draft local plan last year.
See here for my blog earlier this week on what EDDC has done …. http://www.claire-wright.org/…/eddc_proposes_highest_housin…
Frankly, the council has sold the western end of the district off to the highest bidder. Villages like Clyst Honiton, Rockbeare and Blackhorse are set to be absolutely swamped in urban sprawl.
The council promised Rockbeare that it would be protected by a green wedge. If you saw the area that Cranbrook is set to expand now, massively south of the old A30, you would be shocked. Rockbeare is set to be lost amid bricks and concrete.
Whimple was supposed to have a green wedge to protect it from Cranbrook.
Not any more.
Whimple’s green wedge is proposed to have a great chunk eaten out of it as Cranbrook also sprawls to the east.
Given that councillors have never had the chance to question the consultants I moved an amendment that both sets of consultants are invited to the next overview and scrutiny committee meeting.
This amendment was argued against by the chief executive, who for some reason decided to mention my “parliamentary ambitions.”
It was voted down mainly by the conservative group.
My second amendment proposed an extension of the consultation period by two weeks, making a total of an eight week consultation period. This proposal was carried, despite some senior conservatives arguing against it.
Interestingly, I informed the council that Mid Devon District Council (which has been working with EDDC on this) has opted for a low growth scenario for its district. This is because Mid Devon councillors did not wish to concrete over any more of the countryside than they had to.
So why has EDDC opted for such a high growth level?(it is impossible to even match the levels to any figures in the reports!)
The chief executive said it was because East Devon is a “growth area.”
But I replied, the consultants knew this before they drafted their report didn’t they.
Yet they still recommended a preferred approach of significantly lower development, that is also in line with government growth projections.
Why oh why is EDDC doing this?
The Local Plan, with some minor amendments, was voted through by the majority of councillors.
Senior officers of the council must be politically neutral, especially now
It says so on page 186 of EDDC’s constitution.
Political neutrality
3.1 You must serve all Councillors equally regardless of their political beliefs.
3.2 If you are asked to advise one of the political groups, you must do so in an impartial way and only with the prior approval of the Chief Executive.
3.3 You must follow every Council Policy and not let your own personal or political opinions interfere with your work.
So, why did CEO Mark Williams, when dealing with incisive questions from Councillor Claire Wright at the Council’s meeting about the Local Plan, (when she suggested consultants who wrote recent reports to the council should be questioned by those councillors) refer to her “political ambitions”?
East Devon Watch 