http://www.room151.co.uk/latest/richard-cohen-east-devons-deputy-ceo-on-opportunities-innovation/
Daily Archives: 8 Jul 2015
DCC cost of relocating offices to 2 floors of Barnstaple building
This begs the question: if £4 million was the cost for moving a few staff into 2 floors of a building – what is the REAL cost of building a totally new HQ?
“The council was proposing to move its staff from the civic centre, which has recently been vacated, and on to the top two floors of the Barnstaple Library building, one of which houses the record office.
But it today announced it is instead looking into plans to convert the civic centre annex into a modern open plan office.
This would cost around £3 million – £1 million less than the estimated £4 million it would have cost to redevelop the library building. …
… Councillor John Clatworthy, the county council’s cabinet member with responsibility for council property, said: “It would be wrong to rush head-long into a project at the library when we can spend £1 million less moving to alternative accommodation which is also suitable. It’s prudent that we looked at the options, and I’m pleased that a better solution has been found.
Will Hugo Swire save Ottery St Mary hospital? Hhmmm!
He’s much better at examining the drains in Ottery and learning how to make pizza than doing anything about its hospitals – in contrast with election hopeful Claire Wright who continues to campaign tirelessly for all local community hospitals:
And googling for what he’s been up to this week reveals that he is much taken up with Mongolia, the Maldives and Latin America MUCH more exotic than Ottery St Mary.
Still, new District Councillor Paul Carter will no doubt step into the breach – after all, this is what you come into local politics for isn’t it.
The Asset Management … Group … Forum … bunfight … secret society …
This comment from Paul Freeman to an earlier article has been bumped up to a post because of its great importance in the Battle for Transparency:
“Ah, how I dream that the Asset Management meetings were actually a Committee – as indeed it really should be.
Committees are subject to legal transparency requirements – they need to be open to the public, they need to have published agendas and minutes.
But in its infinite wisdom – or as I call it hypocrisy – the council leadership have decided that the group of people who will manage the councils assets with meet in a Forum rather than a Committee, because then they don’t need to allow the public to be at the meetings and don’t need to publish agendas and minutes.
See if you can find Asset Management on the council meetings web page
http://eastdevon.gov.uk/council-and-democracy/committees-and-meetings/
But if you look here:
Click to access mtg-prog-201516-matrix.pdf
you can see the dates for the Asset Management meetings.
But if you read the EDDC Constitution which can be found at:
Click to access constitution-2014-october-.pdf
(something that the council leadership apparently doesn’t bother to do), then on page 31 it states “A Panel or Forum will normally sit in public.” (It also states “They will be an important vehicle for ensuring the involvement of the community in policy development and review”, so it is difficult to see how a closed meeting without published agendas or minutes meets this objective.)
Indeed, since it is not a committee, they don’t need to make the Asset Management Forum membership proportional to the number of councillors in each political group either. According to the minutes of the annual council in May 2015 which can be found at:
Click to access annual-council-270515-combined-mins-with-apps.pdf
on page 16 it says that the full members of this Forum are Andrew Moulding (Con.), Phil Skinner (Con.), Ian Thomas (Con.), Geoff Pook (Ind. come Con.), with Paul Diviani (Con.) and Stuart Hughes (Con.) as ex-officio members. So, despite holding 25% of the seats, there are no Independent Group councillors on this Forum at all.
Turning the Asset Management Forum into a formal Committee was a stated Aim of the East Devon Alliance candidates, and I imagine is still an objective if they can ever achieve it.
Is it any wonder that the more informed residents of East Devon think that there is a need for a fresh start at EDDC?”
Happy Clappy Midweek Herald!
Just to throw you off the scent, there is a “controversial” story on the front page but thereafter we continue to luve in Utopian East Devon!
A mildly critical story about EDDC ignoring the protected species of bat in their relocation plans is relegated to a small article on page 15 which gives more prominence to EDDC’s views than anyone else’s.
And Neil Parish is lauded for his efforts to publicise heart disease but NOTHING about him saying that the public (ie us) should be encouraged to “get behind” fracking.
We do at least still have the “View from” titles to give us a more balanced set of new stories each week.
Oh, and a quickie mentioned by someone from Sidmouth last week: why does the Sidmouth Herald carry a Beer news page when the Midweek Herald doesn’t? Beer is about 10 miles from Sidmouth and about 2 miles from Seaton. It couldn’t be snobbery, surely!
East Devon Watch 