First thoughts?
Owl’s – well, it doesn’t look like it will win any design awards! Personally, Owl preferred the boating lake and swan pedallos.
http://www.devonlive.com/news/devon-news/watersports-centre-plans-exmouth-seafront-575281
Daily Archives: 4 Oct 2017
DCC Ind. East Devon Alliance Councillor Martin Shaw will try again to get DCC to see sense on bed closures
“PRESS RELEASE
Tomorrow (Thursday) Devon County Council will discuss a new call to review the controversial closure of beds in community hospitals in Honiton, Okehampton, Seaton and Whipton.
I have been told my motion will be discussed, rather than referred to Cabinet as is normal with most motions.
The motion proposes to redress the widely perceived failure of the Health Scrutiny Committee to properly scrutinise NEW Devon CCG’s decisions, which has allowed the CCG to go ahead with the closures.
The motion asks Health Scrutiny, which alone has legal power to refer the decision, to look again the outstanding issues, while at the same time committing the Council to alerting the Secretary of State to the disquiet in the County over the issue.
The motion also highlights the urgent call by Simon Stevens, Head of the NHS in England, to free up more hospital beds in view of the danger of an extreme flu season this winter.
I will issue the text of my speech tomorrow morning.
Martin Shaw
Independent East Devon Alliance County Councillor for Seaton & Colyton”
Conservatives talking of building council houses is an example of “cognitive dissonance”
“If you want to see cognitive dissonance in action, watch the Conservative party try to develop popular housing policies without contravening its loyalty to developers, landlords or free market fundamentalism.
For years, experts from across the housing sector have called for investment in social housing and proper regulation of the private rented sector, so it was entirely predictable that Theresa May’s flagship policy at this year’s conference was a £10bn boost for the housing bubble in the form of the Help to Buy scheme. There may now be some move towards investment in housebuilding – albeit in partnership with large corporations – but the problem remains that the Conservatives are unwilling to confront the origins of the UK’s “great housing disaster”.
This apparent inability to understand root causes is a tendency that has afflicted successive governments. In 1989, as Margaret Thatcher’s government finalised the deregulation of the private rented sector, it was put to the then housing minister, Sir George Young, that some tenants might struggle with rents that would inevitably rise once rent controls were lifted. “If people cannot afford to pay that market rent,” Young assured, “housing benefit will take the strain.”
Fast forward to 2010 and the coalition government’s decision to cap housing benefit because its expenditure in the private rented sector was “out of control”. No one in David Cameron’s government mentioned deregulation, but to anyone who knew the history, the connection was clear: private sector tenants were now to be punished for the consequences of Thatcher’s reforms.
Jeremy Corbyn’s recent announcement that Labour would reintroduce some form of rent control has prompted landlords to warn that such a move would be a “disaster” for tenants. Landlords often claim to be acting in the best interests of tenants, yet cases in which tenants themselves laud the merits of uncontrolled rents are rather more difficult to find.
… It is clear that the UK needs investment in social housing, but regardless of what May announces today it will take time to build the number of homes needed to have a knock-on effect on prices. In the meantime, there are various models of rent control that have been proven to create more secure, affordable and sustainable rented sectors in other countries. Adopting a model such as that proposed by Generation Rent above would improve the lives of millions of renters in the here and now.
The truth is that the UK’s housing crisis is not merely a problem of supply and demand, but of class inequality being reproduced through property relations. Perhaps it is the prospect of the present system being curtailed that some find so terrifying.
• Matt Wilde is a research fellow in anthropology at the London School of Economics and Political Science.”
Devon to be one of worst-hit areas for inability to cope with ageing population
Devon will have largest shortage in number of beds, with a projected 1,921 short by 2022
“… Izzi Seccombe, from the Local Government Association, said: ‘These findings reinforce our warning about the urgent need to reform adult social care and deliver a long-term sustainable solution that delivers a range of high-quality care and support for the growing numbers of people who will need it.
‘It is absolutely critical that the Government uses the Autumn Budget to bring forward its consultation for social care announced in the Queen’s Speech, and that it works with local government leaders in delivering a long-term sustainable solution for social care.
‘To tackle the problems we face tomorrow, we must start planning today.’
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4946632/Nine-10-areas-run-care-home-places.html
A Tory council leader pleads for cross-party initiatives and unitisation to cut costs
Owl sats: One has to wonder if he would be putting out the same message if his party had a majority.
“Austerity means careful, selective investment is needed in core services, says Martin Tett, the Conservative leader of Buckinghamshire council
“… Less than a fortnight ago, the LGA sent chancellor Philip Hammond a 40-page submission ahead of the autumn budget which warned that services in England were at “tipping point” as a result of significant funding gaps, pointing to children’s services, adult social care and homelessness. By the end of this decade, English town halls will have seen £16bn of reductions to government grant funding – and from April 2019, 168 councils will not receive any funding for day-to-day expenditure.
Among its many appeals, the umbrella body urged the government to meet a £5.8bn funding gap facing existing local services by 2019/2020, of which £2.3bn is identified in adult social care. This figure includes £1.3bn that the LGA says is needed immediately to stabilise the adult social care market. This is despite an additional £2bn announced by Hammond in his spring budget to help councils cope over the next three years.
It also reiterated its call for greater financial flexibility and powers to allow town halls to build new homes in large numbers once more. …
… Alongside its urgent plea for cash for adult social care, the LGA has called for cross-party talks at national level to find a long-term solution to the social care funding crisis. The move echoes a call made by the Commons select committee for communities and local government in March that concluded that inadequate funding was having a serious impact on both the quality and level of care, and said a long-term fix was urgently necessary. Earlier this year, former Lib Dem social care minister Norman Lamb and a small group of cross-party MPs urged the prime minister to set up an NHS and Care convention to work on a sustainable settlement. A recent poll by the charity Independent Age showed that 86% of MPs believe a cross-party consensus is needed. The LGA has even offered to host the first round of discussions. …
… One way to save significant money would be to replace the two-tier system of one county and four district councils with one unitary authority. Having responsibilities split across two tiers of local government is crazy, says Tett. Districts, for example, are responsible for housing, counties for infrastructure – yet they are “two bits of the same jigsaw”. It would speed up decision-making, end the confusion about who is responsible for which services and allow a more holistic approach, such as joint commissioning across housing, health and care, he says.
The business case for unitary authority status has been in communities secretary Sajid Javid’s in-tray since last September. Tett is waiting to see if the reasoned argument will be heard.”
The destruction of trust in the NHS? Hunt has an app for that
“Jeremy Hunt spoke to the Tory conference in Manchester today about the NHS. It was a bizarre spectacle.
Hunt gave the Tories the credit for the fact that we have an NHS. He said he would increase the number of nurse training places – ignoring the fact that there aren’t enough student nurses filling courses now, thanks to the Tories’ decision to scrap bursaries for nursing students. And he tried to claim patient satisfaction levels are at an all-time high in an NHS that’s falling down around our ears amid ever-lengthening waiting times and hospitals running at record deficits.
But his nonsense entered the realm of the surreal when, after calling for a hypocritical round of applause for heroic medical staff who risked their lives to save others in the Manchester and London terror attacks, he said he planned to show nurses how valued they were and to help them manage their family commitments.
With an app.
And he screwed up and let slip that the ‘flexible working app’ he plans to make available is actually for NHS Trusts to be able to get their staff to work extra hours at short notice.
It’s the equivalent of a selfish, idiot husband buying his wife a new iron or vacuum cleaner so she can do ‘her’ chores more efficiently – and expecting her to be pleased at the ‘romantic’ gesture.
Except this is an idiot Health Secretary insulting well over a million NHS workers, If he hadn’t already been the most despised in the history of the NHS, he would be now.”
Video: Hunt – “I’ll give nurses an app to work longer at short notice”
The education magic money tree needs more manure and less bull****
“Schools in Devon will still be among the poorest in the country, despite the government’s new funding formula, according to figures seen by the BBC.
Last month the Conservatives, who run the county council, welcomed extra funding which they said meant Devon’s schools budget would get another £7.5m a year.
But emails obtained by the BBC said this would only improve funding by £22 per pupil, still leaving each school child with £268 a year less than the national average.”
Tories to build council houses, lots of council houses, beautiful council houses, the best council houses …
“Councils are expected to be given new freedoms to build their own homes, while also being forced to assess local need and set targets to construct more housing in their area.”
You see where this is going again?
Developers get a “council house target”, start building, council houses “unviable”
or
Council has to find money to build council houses from their own “profits” on other services such as refuse collection, planning fees, council tax
Magic money trees.
And from a government that deliberately stopped building them.
Yet some will think this is wonderful, and vote for them.
Remember, this is a desperate minority government – the NHS was “safe in their hands” … education was safe in their hands …
Boris: “clear the dead bodies away” and Sirte in Libya will be a great tourist site
“Theresa May is facing further calls to sack Boris Johnson after he said that a war-torn Libyan city only has to “clear the dead bodies away” to become a world-class tourist and business destination.
Johnson was accused by Labour of being “unbelievably crass, callous and cruel” about those who died in the battle to reclaim Sirte from Islamic State (Isis), after he was asked at the Conservative party conference what it was like visiting Libya as foreign secretary.
Speaking about the potential of Sirte, the Libyan city where Muammar Gaddafi was killed, Johnson drew gasps and embarrassed laughter from the audience as he said: “There’s a group of UK business people, wonderful guys who want to invest in Sirte, on the coast, near where Gaddafi was actually captured and executed as some of you may have seen. And they literally have a brilliant vision to turn Sirte, with the help of the municipality of Sirte, to turn it into the next Dubai.
“The only thing they’ve got to do is clear the dead bodies away and then they’ll be there.” …”
Developer making massive profit wants better and quicker service from councils
“The boss of Cala Homes has hit out at ‘understaffed’ councils for slowing the pace of development as the firm reported a fifth year of record growth.
Alan Brown, chief executive of the private housebuilder, said that he wanted to see more “responsibility at a local level” for making sure development of new homes was able to go ahead.
“The issue is about how central government gets local government to take their responsibility more seriously,” he said. “At a time when the country desperately needs more homes, local authorities are cutting back on people.”
Research by the Royal Town Planning Institute released in August found that council planning departments were “just about managing” due to budget pressure.
“All local government services have been under significant pressure over the past few years, However, data suggests that planning and development has been the hardest hit of all,” the research found.
Mr Brown praised Theresa May’s commitment to extending the Help to Buy scheme, which helps first time buyers get onto the housing ladder. The prime minister announced over the weekend that the scheme would benefit a further 135,000 people, giving a boost to housebuilders who feared an end to the subsidy.
Around 14pc of Cala’s sales in the last year have been made through Help to Buy, Mr Brown said, although he added that he thought it should eventually be “transitioned out over time” as the number of higher loan-to-value mortgages increases.
Cala Homes, which is backed by Legal & General and Patron Capital, made revenues of £747.9m in the year to June 30, 27pc higher than in the previous year.
It rapidly increased the number of homes it built, completing 1,677 in the 12-month period compared to 1,151 in the previous year, an increase of 46pc.
Its pre-tax profits jumped 14pc to £68.5m, despite the average selling price of its homes dipping 8pc to £497,000. This was a result of Cala’s move away from building homes worth more than £1m in order to concentrate on more mid-market properties.
Clyde Lewis, analyst at Peel Hunt, said: “We expect the group to see a decent improvement in margins this year as strong volume growth catches up with the overhead investment.”
Unemployed in Glasgow? Tory MP says “Go work on a farm and meet gorgeous EU women”
“A Conservative MP has said young people should “get on their bikes” and take farming jobs where they can work with “loads of gorgeous EU women”.
Craig Mackinlay, the MP for South Thanet, told a fringe meeting at the Conservative conference in Manchester that British youngsters needed to show the same motivation as low-skilled workers from elsewhere in Europe.
“I was struggling to think why wouldn’t a youngster from Glasgow without a job come down to the south to work for a farm for the summer with loads of gorgeous EU women working there?” he said.
“What’s not to like? Get on your bike and find a job.”
East Devon Watch 