Though basically it was just a developer/developer spat – one developer fighting another about who got to build 3,000 houses and where – Persimmon saying that the other developer shouldn’t be allowed to build where it was given permission to build.
Nothing like the right to build masses of houses to bring out the developers’ lawyers!
One for Councillor Twiss, perhaps. And him apparently being a telecomms expert, he might also tell us how he plans to ensure that many rural communities in East Devon can move – not to the new 5G phone service everyone is now anticipating – but just to the much older 3G phone service that some areas of East Devon have never had and which is now considered old-fashioned and out-of-date.
Bet the new EDDC HQ will have 5G …
” … Existing discussions on rural infrastructure often focus on broadband, where demand for digital services often outstrips many urban places but the task of connecting residents and businesses up remains great due to lower population densities and geography which combine to make the commercial case for investment more challenging.
There are debates over whether having a broadband internet ‘service’ should be treated as a basic ‘utility’ much like electricity, water or the traditional telephone or seen as a luxury item. And whether rural residents and businesses expect the same or comparable levels of connectivity as their urban counterparts?
Other discussions have focused on transport: rural residents tend to travel longer distances, have higher costs, greater reliance on car use and increasingly limited access to public transport. These issues are incredibly important to rural communities and while they should not be overlooked there is a tendency to consider them individually and in isolation rather than collectively.
Going forward, we need to monitor whether, how and when existing Government infrastructure projects and programmes are benefitting rural areas. We also need to be mindful of a gap opening up between whether we should update / improve existing infrastructure or provide brand new infrastructure. …
http://www.rsnonline.org.uk/analysis/mind-the-rural-infrastructure-gap
Letter in Guardian:
“There is a lack of political will to fix our broken housing market,” says your leader (28 March). In fact, there is political will not to fix it, because to offer any degree of stability to today’s nascent and growing families would need more than “flatlining” house prices; it would need prices to fall back to a realistic multiplier of local earnings, which is something this government will not have, as evidenced by the outrageous shovelling of public money to development-sector shareholders through Help to Buy.
There should, as you say, be public control over development land, and greater security for tenants, including rent control. You could add penal taxing of vacant property; a separate-use class for second homes; and the taxing of inherited property wealth which continues to widen social division.
But none of this will happen until Generation Rent is sufficiently populous to be electorally threatening and plausible politicians are putting its case. On present indications, that won’t be in time for the 2020 election (and there won’t be one sooner because the Tories are comfortable with a derelict opposition). “
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2017/apr/02/decent-housing-a-necessity-for-a-healthy-society
“… “Standards are falling all the time as demand from shareholders takes priority over quality,” says Phil Waller, a retired construction manager who runs advice and campaigning website brand-newhomes.co.uk. “It used to be unheard of for people to have to move out of their home while it’s repaired, but now it happens far too often.” …
https://www.theguardian.com/money/2017/apr/02/new-build-homes-reputation-problems-developers
Quote from Alison Hernandez, current Police and Crime Commissioner in Express and Echo:
“… there are many officers who used to spend much of their time patrolling streets, who are now much less visible, but nonetheless highly effective in keeping us safe from extremism, cybercrime and protecting our children from sexual exploitation …”
Four questions:
who did these tasks before the officers were taken off the streets?
if no-one did them, why was this and exactly how many officers have been taken off the streets to do them?
could these tasks be done by civilians as they are in other police forces?
if officers have been taken off the streets to deal with terrorism – who is out looking for signs of terrorism on the streets – where it mostly occurs?
Quote from the Vice-Chancellor of Exeter University in this week’s Express and Echo:
“… Exeter powered through the recession with almost no unemployment. Two months ago there were 68 unemployed, 4,800 jobs” …
Yet our LEP and our councils push for more and more jobs.
Without the infrastructure (roads, affordable housing, schools, community hospitals, dentists, doctors) to support those jobs (anyone tried getting into or out of Exeter from East Devon at peak times these days?) how on earth can this be sustained, let alone sustainable?
In addition there is a parliamentary inquiry into STPs which is taking submissions NOW until Tuesday 9 May 2017- full details here:
Coming soon to a GPs surgery near you. Not if it is coming but when it is coming. Well, all that “care at home money” has to come from somewhere so why not the GPs – who will be caring for you at home. Anyone see the flaw here? Owl wonders: will it be possible to get shares in NHS Property Services – it’s booming! It will obviously moving into housing development on those empty sites – can we taxpayers cash in? No? That’s not fair is it.
“Dozens of GP surgeries across the country are threatened with closure after the NHS increased its property service charges by up to 1,000%.
Hundreds of surgeries that rent premises from the NHS have been hit by the increased charges. Practices say they may have to close or else cut back on nurses and doctors. Some surgeries that have refused to pay the invoices have been sent letters threatening legal action and the use of debt collection agencies. The demands are being made by NHS Property Services (NHSPS).
NHSPS is a limited company owned by the Department of Health. It is headed by Elaine Hewitt, a former BT executive, who was paid more than £265,000 in 2015-16, including a bonus of more than £65,000. The organisation, which has a £3.5bn property portfolio and covers about 10% of the NHS estate in England, took over the property management of about 1,400 GP practices when primary care trusts were abolished in 2013.
Practices facing demands of up to £100,000 in extra maintenance costs complain that the charges are unfair and unjustified. They also say that some of the figures have been miscalculated.
“We can’t pass on these costs to the customer — the only way for us to sustain ourselves is to cut services,” said Gaurav Gupta, a GP who is part of a British Medical Association team disputing the charges, formed after doctors started disputing the increased fees; it is overseen by the British Medical Association (BMA), the doctors’ union.
“This is an NHS body trying to run NHS practices out of business. It’s complete madness — it should never have got to this stage.”
NHSPS says it has increased what were traditionally low service charges to reflect more accurately the maintenance costs at practices. GP practices have their rents reimbursed by the NHS, but pay service charges out of their own budgets.
GPs say the increases have been introduced too fast and many of the charges have been “plucked out of the air”.
Among the hardest hit is Shepperton Medical Practice in Surrey, which is facing about a 1,000% rise. It has been billed an extra £100,000 in backdated service charges, more than 11 times last year’s costs, with another £100,000 charge to follow next year.
The surgery said it might be forced to close if the bill was not reduced.
“They’ve increased the service charges out of all proportion to what they’re actually providing,” said Simon Bellamy, a GP at Shepperton. “They appear to have stuck a finger in the air and come up with a sum, basically. If we have to pay all of that money then the practice won’t be viable — we won’t be able to provide the service any longer.”
Bellamy added that 19 of the 48 practices in his area were facing similar charges from NHSPS. NHSPS said the bill sent to Shepperton was incorrect and it was meeting the GPs to discuss the fees.
Kent Mullis, 70, from Leigh-on-Sea in Essex, is a patient who has been campaigning against the charges. His local practice, Valkyrie Surgery, closed one of its premises in September, partly blaming the NHSPS which had increased its bill by thousands of pounds.
NHSPS now says the figures were incorrect, according to the practice.
Mullis said the charges were disgraceful. “I can’t understand why one part of the NHS is ripping off another part of the NHS,” he said.
Evergreen Practice in Bracknell, Berkshire, had service charges increased by 320% from £14,976 in 2015-16 to £62,916 this financial year. This included annual management fees which rose from £1,127 to £43,000.
Prash Nelli, a GP at Evergreen, said: “If this carries on we will have to shut down. And I don’t think other practices can survive either.”
Faversham Medical Practice in Kent says its service charge bill rose from £15,000 in 2014-15 to £60,000 in 2015-16 and then to £80,000 in 2016-17.
These included an increase in maintenance fees from £2,600 two years ago to £40,991 this year and an increase in electricity and gas charges from £5,000 to £12,000 over the same period.
Ian Hume, head of GP premises for the BMA, said: “NHSPS needs to reconsider urgently any charges it intends to levy if these are going to threaten the ability of that practice to deliver patient care.”
Surgeries standing up to their NHS landlord may face legal action. NHSPS threatened one GP surgery with “immediate referral to an external debt recovery agency” and “possible commencement of legal proceedings” if it did not pay up in seven days.
“This is a national issue affecting almost every GP practice which occupies NHSPS property,” said Victoria Armstrong, a partner at Sintons Law, a Newcastle-based firm helping practices to dispute the bills. “There is no real basis in most cases for the increased charges. Our advice is: don’t pay the increase. It would financially cripple practices.”
She said one practice with four partner GPs had received a backdated demand for £100,000. Some GPs had been sent the wrong invoices, while others had been charged extra for gardening and cleaning already covered by their rent.
NHSPS says it is increasing the service charges to reflect maintenance costs more accurately but is keen to address GPs’ concerns. It said: “We have been getting better information about the space our customers actually occupy and this is one reason why some are seeing costs increase and others reduce.
“We want to explain any increases fully and make our bills more understandable. We know we’ve got some way to go on this but we are making improvements. Every penny we generate is reinvested back into the NHS.”
Source: Sunday Times (paywall)
“An urgent review of “weak and helpless” electoral laws is being demanded by a group of leading academics who say that uncontrolled “dark money” poses a threat to the fundamental principles of British democracy.
A working group set up by the London School of Economics warns that new technology has disrupted British politics to such an extent that current laws are unable to ensure a free and fair election or control the influence of money in politics.
Damian Tambini, director of the media policy project at the LSE, who heads the group made up of leading experts in the field, said that new forms of online campaigning had not only changed the ways that political parties target voters, but crucially had also altered the ability of big money interests to manipulate political debate. “There is a real danger we are heading down the US route where whoever spends the most money is most likely to win. That’s why we’ve always controlled spending in this country. But these controls are no longer working.”
Its policy brief published on Saturday concludes that current laws can no longer ensure the fundamental principle of a “level playing field”, or guard against foreign influence, and that parliament urgently needs to review UK electoral law.
It comes as questions continue to be asked about spending during the referendum campaign. In an interview published in Sunday’s Observer New Review, Arron Banks, the founder of the Leave.eu campaign, says: “We were just cleverer than the regulators and the politicians. Of course we were.”
The Electoral Commission is investigating whether work that the data analytics firm Cambridge Analytica may have done for Leave.eu constitutes an undeclared donation from an impermissible foreign donor. Cambridge Analytica is majority owned by the hedge fund billionaire Robert Mercer, who bankrolled Donald Trump. Filings from the White House disclosed on Friday that Steve Bannon, Donald Trump’s strategy chief, was paid $125,333 by the firm last year.
Asked whether he was worried about the Electoral Commission’s investigation into Leave.eu, Banks said: “I don’t give a monkey’s about the Electoral Commission.”
Banks also claimed that Vote Leave “cheated” to get around campaign financing rules by donating money to third party campaigns. “They cheated! They gave 650 grand to a student. Come on! They absolutely, 100% cheated.”
A spokesman for Vote Leave responded: “The Electoral Commission gave us a clean bill of health.”
Privately, the commission admitted that the only penalties it was allowed to impose by law offered no deterrent to political parties, particularly in a one-off referendum. In addition, the LSE found that loopholes in electoral law mean that spending by political parties during the referendum was almost entirely unregulated or even recorded. The real cost of the campaign – building databases to target voters via social media – occurred almost entirely outside the period regulated by law.
Tambini said: “We don’t have a system that is working any more. In this country, we have had laws to control spending by political campaigns but online campaigning has changed everything and none of the existing laws cover it. The ability to throw around large amounts of cash is almost completely uncontrolled. The key costs in campaigning – building the databases – is happening during the period when campaign spending is not regulated at all.
“There is a real danger that public trust in the democratic process will be lost. There is real potential for foreign influence. We have now the ability to manipulate public opinion on a level we have never seen before. And the current framework is weak and helpless.”
The Electoral Commission has not yet made any public statement but privately it said: “We did have this environment that guaranteed a level playing field. But with the shift online that has all changed. We won’t be able to limit the power of money in elections, that’s what we’re very concerned about.”
Tambini said: “It is urgent. There could be a wholesale loss of trust in the process as the result of a scandal or swinging of an election. Though some would argue that has already happened. There has to be a principle of transparency. The public needs to know where the money is coming from. And we don’t.”
Martin Moore, director of the Centre for the Study of Media, Communication and Power, at King’s College London, said the machinery of campaigning had changed so rapidly, the law has had no chance to catch up. “The first election where digital made a difference was in 2008. And now it’s where pretty much all the spending is. It has been a shift that has happened in less than 10 years. What we’re seeing is exactly the same sort of disruption that we’ve seen in news and music and other industries.
“That is exactly what is happening in politics. The problem is that if you disrupt politics, you are also disrupting the democratic process and you are creating a very dangerous or volatile situation.”
In addition, the Electoral Commission said privately that it did not have the resources to monitor campaigns in real time. “It’s just not practical. There is some proactive stuff that we can do but we simply don’t have the resources.” The only action it can take is once the campaign is over and then the only penalties are fines which “campaigns can simply cost into their spends”.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/apr/01/dark-money-threat-to-uk-elections-integrity
Holding the Red Line at Ottery Hospital
“Ottery St Mary people (and from wider afield turned out in force this afternoon to hold the Red Line against any further risk to our hospital and its very building.
We were one of 13 such events across Devon – all residents involved are fighting for their own local hospitals.
Thank you to around 150 determined people who turned up in the pouring rain.
Ottery Hospital lost its general medical beds in 2015 and the stroke unit will transfer to the RD&E imminently.
The message from the CCG was that it would become a health hub. Then it was it “could” become a health hub, nowadays there are little or no assurances from the CCG as to the hospital’s future.
And the wolf is peering in the window…. NHS Property Services has acquired the building for free (and 11 others across Eastern Devon) and is charging commercial rent to a cash-strapped local NHS, who previously owned it!
I am personally disappointed that we were asked to move twice by staff (presumably acting from orders on high) on the basis we were causing an obstruction. Yet I had already cleared our event with Ottery’s senior GP, Dr Simon Kerr who was quite happy about us being there.
Of course we would have moved if a car or ambulance had arrived. One vehicle did during the course of the 45 minutes or so we were present and people moved accordingly.
I felt sorry for police community support officer, Maria Clapp who was having to enforce us moving around as many people, understandably, were not happy about it!
Aside from these frustrating interruptions and my speech getting soggy in the rain and then getting stuck to my foot, it was a great event and thoroughly enjoyable.
I was using my brand new megaphone, which was great fun!
The thing that always happens at these sort of protest events is that a sense of solidarity, energy, shared purpose and iron is created. NO ONE will take any more services away from Ottery Hospital, NOR will it be sold off to the highest bidder by NHS Property Services.
I think we all went away feeling absolutely determined that we will do everything we can to prevent this from happening.
Thank you to EDDC Cllr Peter Faithfull for these excellent photos and thank you to retired Ottery GP, Dr Graham Ward, who urged people to come forward with ideas for the use of the building into the future.
Here’s the call to action at the end of my speech…
1. Write to Hugo Swire MP asking that he takes up Ottery’s case with the CCG and the govt
2. Write to local newspapers – letter for publication to Ottery Herald and Pulmans View From
3. Write to CCG – Chair is Tim Burke
4. Write to chair of DCC health and wellbeing scrutiny cttee after May elections
5. IMPORTANT POINT – Make all your letters public by sending to local press for publication!
Ottery Hospital is OURS. While the beds have gone for now. I live in hope that one day that common sense will prevail and they will be returned one day.”
Until that day we must fight to retain our hospital.”
http://www.claire-wright.org/index.php/post/holding_the_red_line_at_ottery_hospital
Here they are:
Over 300 people surrounded Seaton Hospital, where the CCG are proposing to close all 24 in-patient beds.
Residents heckled Neil Parish MP and after Paul Arnott offered £250 for judicial review of the decision, Parish agreed to match this.
Seaton mayor Marcus Hartnell said that the Town Council would formally seek advice on JR after a meeting on Monday at 6.30 to which the public are welcome.
Seaton GP Dr Mark Welland gave a moving speech pointing out that no GP in the area believes there will be any benefit to patients from the decision. The final speaker, Seaton councillor Martin Shaw, was cheered when he said that the local community had to go all out to fight the decision.
Spot the Independent East Devon Alliance councillors: easy
Spot Tory councillors – impossible!
“The voting membership of the Board may invite additional non-voting members as detailed above to join the Board as they deem appropriate. The may also remove non-voting members from the Board as they deem appropriate.
Eligibility for non-voting membership of the Board will be subject to a protocol that ensures that members are fit and proper persons eg covering matters of criminal record, bankruptcy, not being subject to planning enforcement etc.
To assist the Board they may invite any individuals with particular expertise (including other elected Members) and/or representatives of organisations to attend.
Officers of the District Council, County Council and the Exmouth Town Clerk will attend in an advisory capacity only. The District Council will provide the secretariat service for the Board.”
Click to access combinedcabagenda050417publicversion.pdf
“Fit and proper persons” … fit for what and proper for what?
“Board Structure
Voting Members
EDDC Portfolio Holder for Economy (who shall be the Chair)
EDDC Portfolio Holder for Sustainable Homes and Communities (Vice Chair)
EDDC Exmouth Champion
EDDC Tourism Champion
2 x Devon County Councillor (one who shall represent Exmouth)
2 x Exmouth Town Councillor
And then one representative from each of;
Clinton Devon Estates
Exmouth Chamber of Commerce
Exmouth Licensed Victuallers Association
Exmouth Community Organisations Liaison Panel
Exe Estuary Partnership representative
Non-Voting Members
Alderman Tim Wood
And then one representative from each of;
Neighbourhood Plan Steering Group representative
Leisure East Devon representative
Exmouth tourism business (eg holiday accommodation)
Food and drink business (eg restaurateur)
Exmouth landowner
Exmouth commercial developer”
Click to access combinedcabagenda050417publicversion.pdf
page 89
SO reminiscent of the East Devon Business Forum!!!
And why Clinton Devon Estates when EDDC bought out their restrictive covenant on the site? What exactly is their interest?
Why a licensed victualler – don’t we have enough of them at EDDC already!
Alderman Tim Woods – don’t go there, Owl. So reminiscent of … no, no, no do NOT go there!
All the usual suspects, many of whom have, or will have, vested interests in the final outcome. No-one with REAL scrutiny teeth.
Peter Halse as Chairman!!!
Same old … same old … same Old Boys …
Owl says: no austerity cuts for our councillors – and, no, this is NOT an April Fool joke – unfortunately.
“The Deputy Chief Executive – Development, Regeneration and Partnerships is delegated authority, in consultation with the Office Accommodation Executive Group, to commence works and deliver the new HQ building.
A budget is agreed of £8,692,000 to provide a new HQ building at Honiton Heathpark, which when added to the approved Exmouth Town Hall refurbishment budget of £1,669,000 gives a total gross budget of £10,361,000.
If Cabinet agrees that it wishes to relocate to a new HQ in Honiton then Cabinet is asked whether it wishes to recommend approval of a further sum of £225,000 to fund the addition of a direct access road to the new HQ building past the East Devon Business Centre This is a more direct approach to the building rather than bringing traffic through the Heathpark business park south of the building and does not affect the conclusions in this report in relation to viability and ranking of options for the sale of the Knowle site.”
East Devon Watch 