Monthly Archives: July 2017

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21 Jul 2017

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Accountability, Austerity cuts, Police (local)

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Can anyone make sense of remarks below?

“Devon and Cornwall police officer numbers have dropped below 3,000, according to new figures released in an apparent attempt by the Government to bury bad news.

The number of sworn officers at the force has reduced by 46 over the 12 months to March 31 and now stands at 2,914, a report published on Thursday shows. …

The former Devon and Cornwall police and crime commissioner, Tony Hogg, fought to keep officer numbers above the 3,000 figure for most of his four-year term.

His successor in the elected “crime czar” role, Alison Hernandez, unveiled a £24m plan to add 100 officers to the workforce in January by cutting around half of the police and community support officers (PCSO).

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) report published on July 20 also shows that PCSO numbers have dropped 10 per cent in the two counties, from 347 to 311 in the year to March 31.

Staff numbers also plunged by 12 per cent over the year, from 1,488 to 1,306, a reduction of 182, the report shows. …

The leader of Labour’s county group of seven, Rob Hannaford, blamed the commissioner for the move to halve PCSO numbers, saying the PCC role was an “American gimmick” and “not the way forward”.

“PCSOs often fill gaps and there is concern that huge reductions will only diminish all the good work that has been done,” he told the meetign at County Hall. …

Roger Croad, chairman of the police and crime panel which oversees the PCC, insisted that decisions to re-shape the force were the “sole province” of the chief constable, Shaun Sawyer, and not decided by Ms Hernandez.

Mr Croad said in his opinion a sworn officer was “worth his weight in gold”, adding that chief cos Sawyer had made it clear that cutting PCSOs for officers was “his decision alone”.

“I am not her (sic) as an apologist for the chief constable or the commissioner,” he added.

“Most police forces have reduced PCSO numbers over five years whereas Devon and Cornwall have not. The chief constable has decided that the time is right; also there is a national requirement to uplift armed capacity to deal with the terrorist threat.

“As of June 1 there are 310 PCSOs which the chief constable wants to reduce to 150 by 2021, enabling 100 new officers.

“Several PCSOs have made the transition; there are no plans for any redundancies. The chief constable said he wants the right people with the right skills in the right place doing the right things.”

http://www.devonlive.com/police-numbers-down-264-end-of-parliament-figures-8216-buried-8217-by-government-show/story-30451016-detail/story.html

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21 Jul 2017

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Austerity cuts, Education (local)

The cost of education cuts

“[All] Sixteen teachers have left Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic Primary School in Bristol since the start of the year and have been replaced by temporary staff, who leave their posts today.”

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4717806/Primary-school-chaos-ENTIRE-teaching-staff-quit.html

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21 Jul 2017

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Accountability, Austerity cuts, Hinkley C, Local Enterprise Partnership

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“UK households could pay £50bn to France’s state-owned energy company to prop up Hinkley nuclear plant”

Well, at least it’s not just Devon and Somerset, though Owl suspects we will be paying far more than pur fair share:

“UK households could pay £50bn for the new Hinkley Point C nuclear plant in Somerset, new government figures reveal. That number is more than eight times greater than the National Audit Office’s initial 2013 estimate that a public investment of £6bn would be required.

The spiralling costs are due to the terms of the Government’s agreement with EDF, the French state-owned electricity company, which is building the plant in conjunction with China General Nuclear Power.

That deal guarantees EDF a £92.50 “strike price” for every megawatt hour of electricity that the new plant generates, a figure that critics have said is far too high. …”

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/hinkley-nuclear-plant-edf-uk-households-energy-power-somerset-government-a7849216.html

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21 Jul 2017

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Accountability, DCC, Police (local)

DCC Tories choose not to vote on no-confidence in Hernandez

The article is predictable – Tories don’t admit mistakes or vote out their own, fudge the issue, etc:

http://www.devonlive.com/devon-s-crime-czar-survives-calls-for-her-to-be-removed/story-30450804-detail/story.html

but the three comments currently under the article are perhaps more representative of real people in the real world:

1. We would be better off with the police commissioner from Death in Paradise – at least he wears a smart uniform!

2. The infestation of local government by national politics lurches from one insanity to the next. One suspects that the reason why the Conservative controlled County Council decided against calling for a vote of no confidence in the Conservative PCC has far more to do with the fact that the Conservatives are not very popular just now than with the need to remove the unprofessional occupant of his unwanted sinecure post. Once again, political expediency triumphs over the wellbeing of local people. This is simply appalling!

3. WHO CARES ABOUT HER ANYMORE? SHE IS JUST A VERY EXPENSIVE “LAUGHING STOCK!!!”

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21 Jul 2017

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Misc

BBC Devon live website 13.13 hrs

“The health and social care system is under “unprecedented pressure” according to the councillor responsible for adult social care in Cornwall.

Rob Rotchell was responding to figures which show a flagship government scheme to help cut bed-blocking in Cornwall isn’t working.

The Better Care fund was introduced in 2013 to free up hospital beds, but according to the latest figures from Cornwall Council, the number of days where patients had to stay in hospital because there was no onward care rose by 35% despite a target to reduce it by 10%.

Mr Rotchell says the challenge is great, with the demand greater in Cornwall because of its ageing demographic.

“The number of older people who are living longer and needing our services is getting greater every single year,” he said.”

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21 Jul 2017

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Accountability, Austerity cuts, Police (local)

“”Police and crime commissioners, your time is up”

Jawad Iqbal, todays Times (paywall)

“The role of police and crime commissioner is a discredited experiment and should be abolished. Research conducted before the most recent elections for PCCs, as they’re known, found that fewer than one in ten people knew who their local one was. This despite the fact that they control a policing budget of £12.5 billion and have the final say in appointing chief constables.

So, five years into an experiment that was meant to spearhead a revival of local democracy and police accountability, it is clearly far from a success. The warning signs were there from the beginning: turnout for the first round of voting in 2012 was only 15 per cent — the lowest figure ever recorded for a national election. One polling station in Newport, Gwent, registered no voters at all.

Things improved a little last year, with turnout at 26 per cent, but this had much to do with votes being held on the same day as local government elections.

PCCs who come to public notice usually do so for all the wrong reasons. The Kent PCC, Ann Barnes, was ridiculed for struggling to explain her job during a television interview, as well as for paying £15,000 to a 17-year-old “youth commissioner” who was forced to resign after it emerged she had sent abusive tweets.

Shaun Wright, the South Yorkshire PCC, tried and failed to cling to office, despite police failures in the Rotherham child abuse scandal. Cumbria’s PCC, Richard Rhodes, apologised for wasting £700 on two trips in a chauffeur-driven car. Most notoriously of all, the Devon and Cornwall PCC, Alison Hernandez, appeared to suggest last month that ordinary citizens with gun licences might be able to help in a terrorist crisis. And at a time when policing budgets are being squeezed, the salaries of the majority of PCCs — between £70,000 and £85,000 — don’t exactly represent value for money.

Ministers should have acted on the findings of the 2013 Stevens report into policing, which dismissed PCCs as a “fatally flawed” system. It is time we cut our losses and dropped them. The latest crime figures in England and Wales, published yesterday, show the biggest annual rise in a decade, with rising levels of the most serious violent offences. All the more reason for precious funds to go into frontline policing — not into a discredited vanity exercise that flatters the egos of overpromoted busybodies and failed MPs.”

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20 Jul 2017

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Accountability, EDDC, Paul Diviani

Oh dear! Diviani is described as “strong and stable”!

“Councillor Mark Williamson proposed Councillor Paul Diviani as Leader of the Council for the ensuing year. This proposal was seconded by Councillor Brian Bailey.

In proposing, Councillor Mark Williamson spoke highly of Councillor Diviani’s leadership during the many challenges which had faced the Council over the years he had been Leader and of his faith in Councillor Diviani’s ability to lead though future challenges. He undertook the role calmly, purposefully and with intelligence and was a strong and stable leader.”

Click to access 260717-council-agenda-with-minute-book.pdf

page 37

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20 Jul 2017

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Accountability, Democracy, Minority Government, Sleaze, Spin, Transparency

Government tries to bury bad news on “take out the trash day”

“Theresa May has been accused of an “absolute affront” to democracy after dumping dozens of official documents online on parliament’s last day of term, showing the police force numbers have dropped to a 30-year low and the number of soldiers has fallen by 7,000.

The government has published very little for weeks after the election but about 22 written statements and dozens of Whitehall reports were released on Thursday, just as MPs embark on their long summer break.

The tactic – known as “take out the trash day” – means MPs will not be able to scrutinise the information properly while parliament is away for the next seven weeks. The statements included a damning human rights assessment of the UK’s ally Saudi Arabia, the cancellation of the electrification of a key railway and a decision to opt into some new EU regulations on crime-fighting, even though the UK is heading for Brexit.

Toby Perkins, a Labour MP, said the rush of documents released on the last day before recess was an “absolute affront to parliament”.

Revelations in the set of documents included:

• A drop of 0.7% to 123,142 police officers across all ranks in England and Wales at the end of March this year. This is the lowest number at the end of a financial year since comparable records began in 1996.

• Warnings in a separate Foreign Office report that there are grave concerns about the human rights situations in countries such as Saudi Arabia, China and Bahrain though many of the countries listed bought billions of pounds of arms from the UK.

Britain has sold £3.3bn worth of arms to Saudi Arabia in the past two years alone, including licences for aircraft, drones, grenades, and missiles. The Foreign Office report said the UK is “deeply concerned about the application of the death penalty” in Saudi Arabia and restrictions on freedom of expression, as well as women’s rights. [Our MP Swire is a very frequent visitor to Saudi Arabia, sometimes when British arms dealers are also there]

Bahrain, one of the first countries visited by May when she became prime minister, is criticised for locking up pro-democracy activists, such as the writer Nabeel Rajab. Other countries of concern listed included Afghanistan, Burundi, China, Iran, Iraq, Myanmar, Russia, Syria and Yemen.

• The decision to scrap the electrification of train lines, which had been heralded as a way of making the rail network faster, greener and cleaner, after massive budget overruns of billions of pounds.

• A statement showing that the UK plans to opt into new Brussels regulations allowing for more cross-border police cooperation in cases where children are at risk of parental abduction – news that pro-EU campaigners said demonstrates the risks of a hard Brexit, which might force the UK to abandon the deal.

• A report showing that schools and colleges do not currently have the capacity to teach all pupils maths until they are 18, with about a decade needed to expand capacity.

Sir Adrian Smith’s review said England “remains unusual” in not requiring study of maths beyond 16, compared with most advanced nations. Schools will get new funding to improve the quality of teaching for maths A-level, the schools minister, Nick Gibb, said.”

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/jul/20/tories-use-take-out-the-trash-day-to-dump-controversial-reports

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20 Jul 2017

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Accountability, Sleaze, Standards Committee, Transparency

Ministers and revolving doors

“The number of former ministers taking up jobs outside parliament has risen by nearly 60% in a year, official figures disclose.

The increase, from 33 former ministers to 52, coincides with complaints that lawmakers are routinely making use of a “revolving door” to pursue lucrative contracts in the private sector.

Francis Maude, the former Cabinet Office minister and industry minister, appears to have taken up the highest number of external roles over the past year, with nine posts.

Ed Davey, the former energy secretary, declares eight different commissions from his independent consultancy, which specialises in energy and climate change.

The data has been disclosed in the annual report of the ministerial jobs watchdog, the advisory committee on business appointments (Acoba).

Former ministers are required to seek and abide by the committee’s advice before taking up appointments in the two-year period after they leave office.

The report found that the committee advised 52 former ministers in relation to 104 appointments in the year to March 2017. During the previous year, 33 former ministers took up 123 jobs.

Maude’s jobs include being an adviser on Brexit to the international law firm Covington and Burling, an adviser to OakNorth Bank, the chair of an advertising agency, and adviser to the business intelligence firm GPW. He has also set up his own consultancy.

Davey, who lost his seat in May 2015 but returned to parliament at this year’s general election, established an independent consultancy, which has taken on work from companies including Engie UK, SIT Group, and NextEnergy Capital.

George Osborne, the former chancellor who stood down as an MP in July, was severely criticised in May for taking up a job as editor of the Evening Standard without waiting for advice from Acoba.

Since leaving office, Osborne has also worked in a £650,000-a-year advisory post at the investment bank BlackRock, got a professorship at the University of Manchester, become a fellow at the McCain Institute in Arizona, and been paid £75,000 to attend speaking engagements.

Since leaving Downing Street last year, David Cameron has taken up four roles. He is on the books of Washington Speakers Bureau, is president of the Alzheimer’s Society, and has taken up an unpaid appointment as chairman of the LSE-Oxford Commission on Growth in Fragile States.

Acoba was branded a “toothless regulator” in April by the public administration and constitutional affairs committee, amid calls for a much tougher system of independent checks.

A National Audit Office report issued this week found that rules that are meant to stop civil servants abusing their contacts and knowledge in the private sector are not being consistently applied or monitored.”

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/jul/20/more-ex-ministers-take-private-sector-jobs-amid-revolving-door-claims

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20 Jul 2017

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Accountability, DCC, Health and Social Care (local), Honiton/ Gittisham, Martin Shaw (Seaton), NHS (local), Seaton/ Colyford / Colyton

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Honiton and Seaton hospitals – crunch meeting on Tuesday

Owl says: it remains to be seen whether Tory members of the scrutiny committee will be dragooned and manipulated as they were at the last meeting – when chair Sarah Randall-Johnson bent over backwards to ensure that no vote was taken on whether to refer the CCG’s decisions to the Secretary of State. The CCG had not fulfilled the criteria previously set by the committee to avoid the decision, but she insisted they should be given even more time to defend themselves

“Council [DCC] to make crucial decision on proposal to axe hospital beds
“Hospital campaigners in the Seaton and Honiton areas are preparing for a crucial meeting of Devon County Council’s health scrutiny committee next week.

Next Tuesday, Devon County Council’s scrutiny committee will decide whether to use its power to refer the decision of the NEW Devon Clinical Commission Group (CCG) to close all in-patient beds in Seaton, Honiton and Okehampton hospitals to the Secretary of State for Health.

The meeting is a defining moment in the saga surrounding the CCG’s proposals to axe all of Honiton and Seaton’s inpatient beds.

Under the initial proposals, Seaton was earmarked to retain its 18 beds – but those in Honiton and Okehampton did not appear in any of the shortlisted options following the scoring process.

A large group of protesters have now planned to congregate outside County Hall in Exeter in a last-ditch effort to reverse the proposals, before they attend the meeting at 2.15pm.

Among those who will be speaking against the plans are Seaton and Colyton county councillor Martin Shaw, Seaton mayor Jack Rowland, and the chairman of East Devon District Council’s scrutiny committee, Cllr Roger Giles. Other residents of Axminster and Honiton will also speak at the meeting.

Cllr Shaw said: “This is a crucial decision not only for the beds but also for the future of the hospitals.

“The CCG’s next step is its local estate strategy, which is likely to involve partial or even complete closures of hospitals.

“Seaton is more remote from acute hospitals than any other East Devon town and it is vital that we retain our hospital, which was built by the local community.”

Devon County Council’s scrutiny committee reviewed the proposals last month but opted to defer referring them to the Secretary of State while it investigates the health authority’s evidence for saying its ‘care at home’ policy will be better for residents.

Speaking at the meeting, Dr Sonja Manton, director of strategy at the CCG, assured the committee that they will not introduce the bed cuts until they are sure the new model of care works and she invited members to sit in on their planning for it.

If it was shown it could not be implemented, the decision to close the beds could be reversed.”

http://www.midweekherald.co.uk/news/council-to-make-crucial-decision-on-proposal-to-axe-hospital-beds-1-5113882

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20 Jul 2017

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Misc

EDDC is checking data from the Tenancy Deposit Protection scheme

Local authorities are allowed access to data on the Tenancy Deposit Protection schemes – the DCLG may disclose details of Deposit Protection Service activities to regulators, industry bodies and other organisations for the purposes of fraud prevention, money laundering prevention and where there are concerns over activities.

These other organisations are required to protect personal information on behalf of DCLG and cannot use personal information for purposes unconnected with The Deposit Protection Service.

The information is usually used to check that landlords and agents have protected deposits properly and that they also appear on the respective Landlord Registers.

“Measures within the Housing and Planning Act 2016 allow local housing authorities in England to access information held by the Tenancy Deposit Protection (TDP) schemes. Local Housing Authorities must only use the data:

1. For a purpose connected with the exercise of their functions under Parts 1-4 of the Housing Act 2004 in relation to any premises (in general improving housing conditions, licencing of Houses in Multiple Occupation, selective licencing of other accommodation and management orders); and

2. For the purpose of investigating whether an offence has been committed under any of those Parts in relation to any premises.

Local Housing Authorities are not required to access the information provided by the TDP schemes. It is up to individual authorities to decide whether to access and use the information or not, depending on local circumstances and other data sources available to them.

A list of local Housing Authorities in England who are known to have applied to the schemes for access to the information in the first quarter of 2017 is shown below. …”

https://www.theyworkforyou.com/wrans/?id=2017-07-11.4183.h&s=%22east+devon%22#g4183.r0

[EDDC is named as one of the organisations which accesses this information.]

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20 Jul 2017

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Accountability, Scrutiny

What do you do when your boss makes no sense?

Here is a useful touchstone: when things get this BAD, it’s time to call in the medics”

Donald Trump interview:

“Well, Napoleon finished a little bit bad. But I asked that. So I asked the president, so what about Napoleon? He said: “No, no, no. What he did was incredible. He designed Paris.” [garbled] The street grid, the way they work, you know, the spokes. He did so many things even beyond. And his one problem is he didn’t go to Russia that night because he had extracurricular activities, and they froze to death. How many times has Russia been saved by the weather?

Same thing happened to Hitler. Not for that reason, though. Hitler wanted to consolidate. He was all set to walk in. But he wanted to consolidate, and it went and dropped to 35 degrees below zero, and that was the end of that army. But the Russians have great fighters in the cold. They use the cold to their advantage. I mean, they’ve won five wars where the armies that went against them froze to death. [crosstalk] It’s pretty amazing.”

Immediately after that, after having brought up Napoleon and Hitler and people freezing to death, Donald Trump declared – with an apparent lack of irony – “So, we’re having a good time.”

http://www.palmerreport.com/politics/trump-hitler-napoleon-having-good-time/3959/

Full disturbing interview link:

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20 Jul 2017

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Affordable and Social Housing, Developers/ Development, Inequality

One in three earns less than two-thirds average wage in south-west

Affordable Housing (80% average price of houses being built at the time) – in your dreams. Inequality- the price paid for rampant “growth”.

“The wage gap is growing in the South West – with almost a third of people now earning less than two-thirds of the UK average.

New figures show 31.2% of full-time employees in our region earned less than two thirds of the national average during the last quarter of 2016.

That compares to just 29.3% as recently as the first quarter of 2015.

The increase is the fifth biggest for any region in the UK after the South East, the North East and Northern Ireland (with the same increase) and Wales. …”

http://www.devonlive.com/one-in-three-in-devon-earn-two-thirds-less-than-the-average-wage/story-30449598-detail/story.html

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20 Jul 2017

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Accountability, Audit (EDDC), Corruption, Monitoring Officer, Scrutiny, Transparency

Council fraud: never get complacent or assume auditors know what they are doing

Here are three examples, accessed within 5 minutes on Google.

EX-PLYMOUTH:

“A former Plymouth council official has been arrested as part of a long-running fraud investigation.

Geoff Driver, treasurer and chamberlain at Plymouth City Council in the early 1990s and now Conservative leader of Lancashire County Council (LCC), was held as police probe financial irregularities at LCC. …”

http://www.plymouthherald.co.uk/former-plymouth-council-official-arrested-in-fraud-probe/story-30449451-detail/story.html

CHESHIRE EAST:

“A SECOND member of Cheshire East Council’s senior management has been suspended as a result of an internal disciplinary investigation.

Bill Norman, the council’s director of legal services and monitoring officer, has been absent from his post since April and has now been officially suspended.

The decision follows the suspension of council CEO Mike Suarez on April 27.

A CEC spokesman said: “The Investigation and Disciplinary Committee reconvened on Friday, July 14, 2017. The committee is considering allegations relating to the conduct of senior officers.”

http://www.knutsfordguardian.co.uk/news/15416114.Second_senior_management_suspension_as_Cheshire_East_Council_investigates_misconduct_allegations/

ABERDEEN:

“A councillor has been suspended from certain duties for six months.
Sandy Duncan, who represents Turriff and District, contacted Aberdeenshire colleagues who were due to consider a planning application for a wind turbine from a firm he was partner in.

He was found to have breached the code of conduct for councillors.
The Standards Commission for Scotland found he had acted inappropriately by using council facilities having been expressly warned not to do so.”

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-north-east-orkney-shetland-40366506

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20 Jul 2017

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Accountability, Democracy, EDDC, EDDC Monitoring Officer, Electoral Commission, EU Referendum, General Election, Monitoring Officer, Scrutiny, Transparency, Voting

Voting processes need tightening (and scrutiny) urgently

Why shouldn’t our council’s Scrutiny Committee check in its Electoral and Returning Officer’s procedures – even if the Monitoring Officer doesn’t like the idea because it MIGHT be considered political (by him)? A clean bill of health would reassure voters surely?

“The list of Brexit campaigners done for breaking the rules is getting lengthy.

Following the record £12,000 fine for breaches of spending rules, the pair of £1,000 fines for other offences, the company fined £50,000 for illegal text messages and the 11 anti-EU campaign groups struck off for breaking referendum rules, there’s now another £1,500 fine on a different Brexit campaigner:

The Electoral Commission has fined Mr Henry Meakin, a registered campaigner in the EU referendum, £1,500 for failing to submit his spending return on time. It is an offence not to deliver a spending return by the due date.

Though Mr Meakin reported spending of £37,000 in the campaign, the return was received more than 5 months late.”

https://www.markpack.org.uk/150816/henry-meakin-european-referendum-fine/

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19 Jul 2017

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Accountability, Affordable and Social Housing, Developers/ Development, Inequality, Section 106

Corruption, absolute corruption, developers and councils

BUT THIS BLOG AND OTHERS HAVE BEEN SAYING THIS FOR YEARS AND YEARS AND YEARS AND YEARS!

HEAD … BRICK WALL … HEAD … BRICK WALL

Here are just a few recent East Devon Watch articles:

Tell EDDC what you want Section 106 money spent on so they can ignore you and spend it on what they want!

Section 106 scandal: New controls and a surprising revelation from CEO Mark Williams

The Great EDDC Section 106 Scandal of 2016 – and probably earlier years

Another loophole to avoid “Section 106” payments

Developers, councils and Section 106: the shocking truth

and the BBC has only just discovered it!

“The council that ran the Grenfell Tower block struck deals worth nearly £50m last year to allow developers to avoid having to build affordable homes, research for BBC News shows.

Kensington and Chelsea’s own analysis shows it has built a fraction of the social housing the borough needs.

Developers can pay a fee if they can convince the council that affordable homes would make their plans unviable.

The council said it struggled to build affordable homes in a crowded area.
Kensington and Chelsea has been severely criticised for its failures over Grenfell Tower, including allegations that the regeneration of the tower was done on the cheap and that survivors of the blaze were not properly cared for.

At least 80 people died in the fire.

The disaster, in one of the richest areas in the country, has also thrown a spotlight on the council’s attitude towards its poorest residents.

Huge shortfall

The council’s policy is for half of homes in large housing schemes to be available for rent or sale at below market rates.

The official target is to build 200 affordable units – flats or houses – each year between 2011 and 2021.

But the council’s own figures show that since 2011-12, just 336 units have been built; in 2012-13, just four were completed.

At the same time, Kensington and Chelsea struck deals with developers to pay it nearly £60m.

Since 2011, the council has agreed payments worth £59.7m, in what are known as Section 106 agreements.

The council is allowed to charge developers a fee if their scheme would ordinarily be liable to include social housing but its backers can convince officials that to do so would make the proposal unviable.

That headline figure includes £47.3m in 2016 alone.

The figures have been calculated for BBC News by EG, a property consultancy firm, whose work includes researching planning committee reports for Section 106 payments.

Senior analyst Graham Shone said payment to the council had undergone a “step change” on previous years.

“Maybe the council is a bit more receptive to those kinds of agreements going through as a way to encourage development across the borough,” he said.

The council will gain £12.1m instead of affordable housing at Knightsbridge station

K1 development, Knightsbridge

Developers Chelsfield plan to “reinvigorate, restore and celebrate” the block above Knightsbridge Tube station.

The design includes retail outlets at street level, new offices, 35 residential apartments, an underground car park and a rooftop garden and restaurant.

Given the size of the development, to comply with the council’s own policy, the scheme should include affordable housing.

However, in their planning application, the architects say: “The size of units [flats] are larger than what would normally be associated with affordable housing based on the London Housing Design Guide.”

They also argue the service charge on the flats “would far exceed what would be a sustainable level for affordable housing”.

And while they had considered creating another lift to accommodate affordable housing, this would “compromise” the retail units on the ground floor.

A mix of private and affordable homes, they say, is therefore “not viable”.
The council accepted the arguments, passed the scheme, and will receive £12.1m in lieu of affordable housing at the development.

The payments are meant to help the council provide affordable housing in other parts of the borough or to renovate existing stock.

A paper prepared for the council’s cabinet last year shows that of the nearly £21m the council has received since 2009-10 for affordable homes, £9.2m remains unspent.

Developers can also pay fees to off-set other impacts of their schemes. And the same paper shows that of the total £57.3m that Kensington and Chelsea has received since 2009-10, £36.7m has still not been spent.

None of the developers’ contributions has been used to improve air quality, libraries, sports facilities or healthcare, and very little has been spent on employment initiatives or children’s playgrounds.

The leader of Kensington’s Labour group says he is shocked by the lack of new affordable homes

Robert Atkinson, head of the Labour group at Kensington and Chelsea, said he was shocked by the amount of money the council was receiving and how few affordable homes were being built.

“One of the beauties of living in London is you have a balanced population, and I do think we have a duty not to produce the prettiest ghost town in Western Europe.

“Our first loyalty should be to maintaining and strengthening our communities, and we have fallen down on that job terribly.”

The need for affordable housing in Kensington and Chelsea is acute.

A Freedom of Information request submitted by the BBC last year showed the council had spent £28m providing temporary accommodation to homeless residents in 2015-16, a figure that has doubled in five years.

Almost three-quarters of those people are being housed outside the borough – the highest proportion in London.

The council said that “as the smallest London borough”, with the second highest population density in England and Wales and 4,000 listed buildings, “the borough only has a limited capacity to deliver housing”.

A spokesman said its policy of allowing developers to negotiate on affordable housing “stems from government policy”.

“The council scrutinises any viability information provided by the applicants in detail and in some cases is able to secure higher proportions than those proposed by applicants,” he added.”

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-40643072

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19 Jul 2017

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Accountability, Austerity cuts, Inequality, Sleaze, Spin, Transparency

Rules … what rules … none apply to HS2

“Fears that high-speed rail project HS2’s £55.7bn budget could spiral higher have been underlined by an audit showing unauthorised redundancy payments to staff, far above the government cap on payouts.

HS2 Ltd, the publicly funded company building Britain’s new high-speed rail network, spent £2.76m on payoffs in 2016, of which only £1m was authorised, according to the National Audit Office.

The head of the NAO, Sir Amyas Morse, said the findings highlighted troubling “culture and behaviours” at HS2, which needed to be addressed if taxpayers’ money was to be protected.

The NAO found that the redundancy payments were made in spite of explicit advice from the Department for Transport to HS2 Ltd that it was not permitted to exceed the civil service cap of £95,000.

HS2 circumvented the cap by placing a number of highly paid staff on gardening leave, continuing to pay them for several months although they were no longer working, on top of the maximum payouts. …”

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/jul/19/hs2-cost-nao-redundancy-payouts

and, in the same article:

“HS2 has an agreement with the Treasury to allow it to pay higher wages than elsewhere in the public sector, which Higgins has insisted is vital to recruit the best talent. The previous chief executive of HS2, Simon Kirby, hired from Network Rail in 2014 to oversee the start of construction on a £750,000 salary, quit last September.“

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19 Jul 2017

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Accountability, Democracy, Local Enterprise Partnership, Spin, Transparency

Heart of the South West: 50% self- interest, 49% spin, 1% substance

… and the 1% is generous!

That’s Owl’s summary of this puff job where the Emperors tell us how beautiful their new clothes are – and how we will all benefit from them:

http://www.devonlive.com/how-the-great-south-west-is-set-to-rival-northern-powerhouse/story-30447945-detail/story.html

“Never mind the quality – feel the width”!

And still not an ounce of accountability or transparency!

How long will our councils keep up the charade that these people are working for us – or working at all.

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19 Jul 2017

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Accountability, Democracy, Transparency

Government rules on civil servants moving to private sector replaced by … nothing

“Rules on civil servants moving to posts in the private sector have been operating with no guidance on their use because the Cabinet Office has failed for five years to produce this, the National Audit Office has found.

Its investigation of the Business Appointment Rules also discovered the rules do not say that a department can reject an application, only that these may be accepted or have conditions attached.

The rules apply when civil servants move to outside bodies and are designed to prevent them using privileged information or contacts gained in the civil service or to prevent any perception of impropriety.

Contentious appointments are supposed to be referred to the Advisory Committee on Business Appointments (Acoba).

They are administered by the Cabinet Office but the NAO found it removed guidelines for departments on administering the rules in 2012 to write fresh ones, which have never been completed.

The lack of clarity over rejection of applications even saw the Cabinet Office tell the NAO it thought such rejections did in practice happen, but was unable to supply any evidence.

Nor did the Cabinet Office maintain oversight of how departments implemented the rules, relying on them for enforcing compliance, transparency and public scrutiny.

Auditors also found it impossible to discover from transparency data whether all those leaving the civil service for the private sector who should have made an application under the rules in fact did so. …”

http://www.publicfinance.co.uk/news/2017/07/whitehall-missing-rules-private-sector-appointments-nao-finds

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19 Jul 2017

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Consultation, Councillor Cathy Gardner EDA, EDDC, Sidmouth/ Sidford/ Sidbury

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If YOUR vision for Port Royal isn’t the EDDC vision – you are “scaremongering”

Owl says: Well, that’s rich: who put the 5-storey building into the consultation document? EDDC. So who pre-judged the public consultation? EDDC.

Would the two councils have made such a fuss if it was a Conservative councillor who pointed this out? You decide.

” … Major landowners EDDC and Sidmouth Town Council are exploring options for Port Royal with a scoping study. They have revealed a concept for the site that could incorporate Sidmouth Lifeboat, the sailing club and up to 30 flats in a new building that could stand up to five storeys high.

In a joint statement from both councils, a spokesman said: “We are disappointed by a misleading and scare-mongering petition set up by a local district councillor, Cathy Gardner.

“It is a shame that this petition is pre-judging what the public think and the outcome of consultation with a petition pushing one person’s idea, rather than respecting the opinions of Sidmouth people.

“The councils are asking everyone to express their own opinions instead. The consultation is around the emerging findings of independent experts. There are no plans or proposals being made at this stage.

“We all want to see Port Royal looking as good as the rest of the town’s seafront. Positive ideas and constructive criticism are what we are seeing from Sidmouth people – that is the Sidmouth way.”

Councillor Jeff Turner, who leads the scoping study for the town council, added: “The consultants have not yet produced their final report and, contrary to the misleading statements in this petition wording, there is no fixed plan or proposal as to how Port Royal will be redeveloped.

“We should all wait to see what options emerge from the studies and consultations and how these are received and debated at both town and district councils, before jumping to conclusions.”

He said the study will also take on board the 1,800 responses about Port Royal in the Neighbourhood Plan.

The petition can be found at https://you.38degrees.org.uk/petitions/alternative-plan-for-sidmouth-s-port-royal-the-3r-s.

The campaigners are also staging a public meeting in All Saints Church Hall from 7pm on Wednesday, August 23.”

The councils’ consultation closes on Monday, July 31. It can be found at http://eastdevon.gov.uk/port-royal-consultation/.