It doesn’t seem to have changed since at least 2014 but today we have this WONDERFUL NEW IMAGE ON THE HOME PAGE!
Seems they haven’t yet heard about the stupendous fisaco with postal votes in East Devon (see posts below) but then it is a safe seat for our former MP and our currrent councillors isn’t it!
http://www.exeterexpressandecho.co.uk/New-Ikea-set-open-late-2016/story-26392411-detail/story.html
Surely an Environmental Impact Assessment was needed and these things were spotted? A site such as this with the Estuary close by would have had one wouldn’t it ……
After all, EDDc does know what its doing and protects the environment doesn’t it?
Aah, spotted the flaw …..
Or are they so sure they will be re-elected they aren’t bothering much?
We haven’t seen any pictures of Hugo Swire and Paul Diviani together either …
Hugo Swire has a link on Twitter so you can find out what his party has planned for our area:
https://www.conservatives.com/yourarea.aspx
Unfortunately it forces you to put your postcode and email address – you can’t search for “East Devon” or “Sidmouth” anonymously so the data collected knows where you live within a few yards AND it signs you up to receive Conservative Party propaganda and fundraising emails until you opt out!
We chose not to use it! East Devon Watch likes its privacy!
The job is SEPARATE to any other post and each Returning Officer receives a fee for doing the job (often in excess of £20,000 per election) and a budget. It seems Mr Williams had a budget of more than £121,000 in 2010 to run this procedure:
“The specified services are—
(a)conducting the election;
(b)discharging the returning officer’s duties at the election; and
(c)making arrangements for the election.”
http://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2010/830/made
He got it wrong in 2011 too:
Here are the Performance Standards for Returning Officers – standard 1 on page 12 appears to have been breached:
Click to access Part-A-Returning-Officer-role-and-responsibilities.pdf
The explanation:
“All the District Elections and Town/Parish Council elections are administered by the Returning Officer for the relevant Constituency up until after the Constituency votes have been separated from the District and Town/Parish votes and the number of votes cast and spoilt papers, etc. has been reconciled with the Polling Station or postal voting accounts. At that point, the District and Town/Council votes are re-sealed into ballot boxes and transported to the relevant District Council on Friday 8th May for counting by the Returning Officer (Mark Williams) for the East Devon District Council.
So the postal voting instructions for East Devon Constituency were prepared by Mark Williams. The postal voting instructions for Tiverton and Honiton were prepared by Mid Devon Returning Officer and the postal voting instructions for Central Devon Constituency were prepared by West Devon Returning Officer.
So, it seems only Mark Williams (who has been the Returning Officer for East Devon for at least 9 years and maybe longer) made mistakes in the postal voting instructions. Therefore, the correction letter is only going to the multi-seat wards within the East Devon Constituency.
Mr Williams has presumably been the Returning Officer since he started at East Devon District Council – we are not sure how long he has been CEO and Returning Officer but we have traced it back to at least 2006!
From a correspondent:
“This is news hot from the East Devon election workers at the Knowle (today Sunday!).
They say they have had dozens of phone calls about the discrepancy between the “Instructions for voting by post” (i.e. vote ONCE only on Green ballot paper) and the Green ballot paper itself (where the instruction is to vote for the number of votes according to the number of seats).
The election worker at the Knowle is contacting all the people who left messages about the discrepancy in the instructions, to say the following action is being taken urgently:
1. A letter is being sent to all postal voters in the East Devon Constituency (NOT the Tiverton and Honiton or the Central Devon Constituencies).
2. The letter will explain that votes should be cast according to the instructions on the Green ballot paper, not according to the written “Instructions for voting by post”
3. If a person has already voted not in accordance with the instructions on the Green ballot paper, they should call Knowle and request a new ballot paper to be issued, which will be substituted for their vote already returned.”
Will the head of the instigator of this cock-up have to roll? It belongs to CEO of East Devon District Council (and Returning Officer) Mark Williams, so who knows? He got off scot-free after his appearance before the Parliamentary Commission on Voter Engagement last December where he was heavily criticised and singled out in their report for failing to do enough to register missing voters, so maybe the Teflon coating will remain – especially if the “same olds” remain in power at EDDC.
What will now happen if some people who had followed the instructions on the WHITE (wrong) paper do not cast new votes on the GREEN (correct) paper and the seat can only be decided by a handful of votes fewer than the number of incorrect postal votes for that ward?
NB: seeking clarification as to why workers state remediation letters are going out only to the “East Devon Constituency” as East Devon District Council covers THREE Parliamentary constituencies – East Devon (currently Swire), Tiverton and Honiton (currently Parish) and Mid-Devon (currently Stride). It seems unlikely that wrong instructions went out only to the “East Devon constituency” when the district elections are not governed by Parliamentary Constituency boundaries but by Local Authority boundaries which are very different.
Now, if incorrect voting instructions are confined only to the East Devon Parliamentary Constituency, that would need some explaining as separate instructions would have been produced for different areas of East Devon!
Anyone who’s been to the new town of Cranbrook lately, will be interested in this link: http://futuresforumvgs.blogspot.co.uk/2015/04/where-we-live-now-new-town-home-town.html
Was it Churchill who once said, we shape our buildings and our buildings shape us…
Four new candidate videos have been uploaded to YouTube and can be viewed from the following candidate pages:
Mark Daugherty – Exmouth Brixington
Val Ranger – Newton Poppleford and Harpford
Matt Coppell – Ottery Rural
Steve Horner – Yarty
This brings the number of videos available to watch up to 14, the other candidates being:
Robert Crick – Exmouth Littleham
Les Cotton – Budleigh
Megan Armstrong – Exmouth Halsdon
Rob Longhurst – Woodbury and Lympstone
Marianne Rixson – Sidmouth Sidford
Geoff Jung – Raleigh
Dawn Manley – Sidmouth Sidford
Cathy Gardner – Sidmouth Town
Martin Shaw – Seaton
Ben Ingham – Woodbury and Lympstone
Read more at: http://www.eastdevonalliance.org.uk/change-log/20150425/new-candidate-videos-available/
If they are Conservatives you know almost nothing, unless it is Stuart Hughes in which case you probably know too much!
If they are East Devon Alliance Independent candidate you will know their key issues, priorities, motivation and background and be able to consult a video, blog, gallery and contact information
http://www.eastdevonalliance.org.uk/
Transparency and true localism – knowing exactly what they stand for and why and what they intend to DO without party political interference at district level – that’s the name of the game … but it seems some people in some old parties haven’t yet grasped this.
Probably for the same reasons that Swire should be afraid of Claire Wright!
http://www.pressreader.com/uk/the-guardian/20150425/281487864894772/TextView
Good to see a member of the judiciary recognises this problem, even if political parties and the police don’t:
“Last year Mawrey repeated his warning that postal voting enabled electoral cheating on an “industrial scale”. …
…”Challenges should be governed by simpler, modern and less formal rules of procedure allowing judges to achieve justice in the case while having regard to the balance between access and certainty,” it proposes. …
” … In his 200-page judgment on Rahman, Mawrey pointed out that although the election court is a civil hearing, “the criminal standard of proof, namely proof beyond reasonable doubt” is applied. Candidates, unless “a mitigating factor is established”, are deemed responsible for the acts and omissions of their agents. …
“Dr Toby James, senior lecturer in politics at the University of East Anglia and author of Elite Statecraft and Election Administration, said the long delay between last May’s mayoral vote in the east London borough and the election court’s ruling this week highlighted the need for a more speedy resolution process in electoral disputes.
“Imagine what would happen after the general election in two weeks’ time when you have disputes arising from a couple of constituencies and very close party results,” he told the Guardian. “It’s a Victorian procedure. Election justice should be quicker and then we would see if there’s more signs of fraud.”
http://www.andrewchapman.org.uk/ukip-elections.php
Well, now it seems they have – the proud picture of the UKIP car in Seaton has disappeared from his site!
Remember this recent article in the Express &Echo?
‘Disabled tenant fears she may be evicted from home.’
A DISABLED East Devon District Council tenant fears that she and her elderly husband could face “eviction” from their home under the authority’s plans to charge its sheltered accommodation residents for its services.
Because Devon County Council has pulled half-a-million pounds of funding, East Devon’s sheltered housing tenants were informed in the autumn that they will be eligible to pay for the Home Safeguard alarm service and home visits made by Mobile Support Officers – which comes to about £10 a week.
The council has stressed that the charge will be phased in over the next three years and tenants on benefits will receive discounts and a means-tested hardship fund will be available.
The council said it would do “everything it possibly can” to assist residents to meet the new service charge, but that non-payment would be pursued through the courts.
Because the alarm service and support scheme are integral to the sheltered housing, a council spokesperson said residents who do not want both elements will be supported in finding alternative options, including accommodation.
But 71-year-old Kathy Moyle, a tenant in East Budleigh, says she is fearful about the impact of the new charge, but also that the prospect of having to move out if she does not want to pay for both the alarm and support visit elements, is akin to “eviction”.
“We’re being asked to pay for both the alarm and the warden support, and if we don’t want to pay we’ll be classified as not needing the support and could be evicted,” said Kathy. “They’re refusing us the right to say no.
“It will be a case that we choose between heating and food or this – £10 a week is a lot of money. This is no more than an Old Age Pensioner bedroom tax.”
Now more details on the same topic have emerged, from a Freedom of Information (FOI) request by a member of East Devon Alliance: https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/increased_charges_to_sheltered_a
Seems EDA is beavering away on all sorts of election matters right now. We especially recommend the video introductions on the candidates’ pages. http://www.eastdevonalliance.org.uk ….or try them on Youtube . Type eastdevonalliance, then candidate’s name.
“There’s a real democratic value in having a local newspaper,” said Martin Moore of the Media Standards Trust. “It’s not just that it allows the community to know what’s going on. It’s also that the presence of a journalist who turns up to council meetings makes local politicians more accountable and keeps tabs on their behaviour.
“As these papers close – or as they’re hollowed out, closing local offices and running news gathering from a hub in a city miles from people’s lives – we’re gradually creating a serious democratic deficit. The number of professional journalists reporting on local news has plummeted in the last decade. There are now areas of the UK where there is virtually no professional news reporting at all.”
Just as well we have Owls and Zorros!
East Devon Watch 