On a Facebook site, a Seaton beach hut renter has plotted a graph of price increases against cost-of-living increases. Here is a comment on that post:
“£574.80 per year for 48 sq ft [of beach pebbles] = £521,631 per year per acre. To put this in context, the price for an acre of prime agricultural land is c. £5,000-£6,000, so the price for wasteland would be substantially lower and for pebbled beach lower still. So for what EDDC are charging in rent for wasteland, you can buy 100 times that area and keep it forever.
I would presume that EDDC’s justification is “market rates”, and so long as people keep paying these exorbitant amounts, then they can quite reasonably claim that these are “market rates”.
The real answer is that the council leadership, prompted by their pals in government, see themselves more as a capitalistic organisation that needs to be market driven and take local residents for every penny they can rather than a body elected by local residents to serve local residents to provide public services for their benefit.
The only ways I can see to get EDDC to change will be to:
a) Vote with your feet on Beach Huts – stop renting and show the council that their rates are much higher than the market will support; and
b) Use your vote at the next county and district local government elections to elect councillors who see their role as benefiting local residents rather than supporting central government policy.”
East Devon Watch 