” … The legal procedures underway with tenants form part of this ongoing regeneration process.”
Regeneration: another word for “aren’t we clever – we call it “ongoing regeneration” and then we can do anything we like”.
Daily Archives: 10 Nov 2015
You have only until tomorrow to (attempt to) shape EDDC services
http://eastdevon.gov.uk/consultation-and-surveys/moving-and-improving-consultation/
But best guess is Devon and Somerset devolution and “greater Exeter” trumps our wishes!
Our BBC in ten years?
Plans for referendum on extra council tax for policing dropped
Mr Hogg has said that the social media outcry and mistakes made government accountants about how much will be lost has caused his change of mind.
Many social media comments were on the lines of: “why don’t we just get rid of you and your very expensive staff” and ” if there is a mistake in the accounting, how can we trust government information anyway”!
According to research by The Taxpayers Alliance:
Total spending across all OPCCs in 2013-14 was £52 million, equivalent to the starting pay of over 2,200 Constables and
Devon and Cornwall OPCC and West Midlands OPCC both had 7 staff whose role is to promote the OPCC.
Cranbrook says no to gypsies and travellers
” … As part of that consultation, Cranbrook Town Council made it clear that it did not want the provision of a new site for gypsies and travellers in the new town.
In a formal response Cranbrook Town Council clerk Nick Randle said Cranbrook is “not suitable” as it is subject to “strategic allocations for residential development.”
Welcome to our world Cranbrook, now “flavour of the month” has worn off, where it doesn’t matter diddly-squat what you think or what you want – where “consultation” is pointless and where your district councillors and officers ride rough-shod over you.
And show us anywhere in East Devon that DOESN’T have “strategic allocations for residential development”!
But we can be fairly certain that travellers won’t be sited in Whimple!
Think tank says economic growth being forfeited in favour of elderly
If economic growth is being sacrificed as this article implies, where does that put our Local Plan where it is the be-all-and-end-all of it? With no money for infrastructure who will live on new estates with no road connections to employment areas? Who will buy the houses? Who will be able to afford them? Where will the jobs come from with the wages high enough to pay for the houses that young people can’t afford to buy or rent?
” … The Resolution Foundation calculates that, from 2010 to 2019, the budgets for current spending will have been cut by 75% at the Department of Transport, by 64% at the Department for Communities and Local Government and by 53% at the Department for Business. Capital spending is not included in the calculations. By contrast, the NHS budget will have risen by 14% over the same period and the international development budget increased by 40%.
The thinktank questioned whether politicians had thought sufficiently about the reshaping of the state brought about by the mix of cuts and the protections provided to specific departments and age groups.
The foundation said: “While the focus of the autumn statement will largely be on how the pain of spending cuts has been spread around departments – as well as any changes to tax credit reforms – it’s important to step back and consider what the chancellor’s plan means for the long-term role of the state and the support it provides across different parts of the population”.
The thinktank found a growing generational divide since the financial crash, with average spending per head set to fall by 7% for children and 9% among working age adults.
In contrast, spending per capita on older people will rise by about 19% over the same period. By the end of this decade, spending on the state pension will account for more than half of all welfare spending. This is despite the big shift in welfare spending towards pensioners being cushioned to some extent by significant increases in the state pension age since 2010, culminating in a rise to 66 for men and women in 2020.
Continued demographic changes post-2020 are likely to exacerbate the shift in welfare spending towards elderly people.”
The end of social housing and the welfare state?
” … The housing and planning bill, now in the Commons, is designed to finish off social renting. It carries out the manifesto pledge of a right to buy housing association properties at heavy discounts. Local authorities have to sell their most valuable homes to pay towards that discount – so two social homes are lost for every one sold.
Council and housing association rents are cut by 1%, which sounds good but the Institute for Fiscal Studies says it helps very few of the 3.9 million social tenants: it just comes off their housing benefit. But it’s a bonus for the Treasury, taking £1.7bn off the housing benefit bill by leaving a disastrous hole in council and housing-association finances: they will build 14,000 fewer homes to rent. Borrowing to build will be harder, as this loss of rent caused Moody’s to downgrade housing associations’ credit ratings. The FT reports that, as a result of the rent cut, council plans to build 5,448 homes were cancelled instantly.
…For every nine social homes sold off, only one has been built. “Get Britain building,” Cameron said, but few expect those million homes he promised. Housing is at the root of all good social policy. Good jobs, better education, decent communities, children at home in secure families – all depend on somewhere permanent and decent to live. Macmillan knew it, yet Cameron has abandoned it.”
East Devon Watch 