That’s a question two residents are asking in the latest Cranbrook Herald.
A full page, too. And just a rehash of an item on his blog.
Why indeed.
Daily Archives: 10 Nov 2017
Cranbrook (Preferred Approach) consultation opens
PRESS RELEASE
“Cranbrook Plan – Preferred Approach
We are delighted to advise that East Devon District Council are consulting on the above plan and we would welcome your comments that need to be received by us by
9:00 am on Monday 8 January 2018.
The Cranbrook Plan Preferred Approach documents set out proposals for the future development of the town and they include a masterplan that shows the proposed location of differing types of buildings and land uses including homes, shops, community facilities and open spaces. In the consultation documents we provide details of evidence and background reports that support the Cranbrook work and we also have a schedule of potential future policies for Cranbrook development and a sustainability appraisal.
The feedback we receive from this consultation will help inform production of a formal development plan document (or DPD) for the town that we hope to produce and consult on in 2018 and then to formally submit for independent examination. You can find out more about the Cranbrook Plan – Preferred Approach, look at supporting documents and find out how to make comments by visiting our web site at:
and
http://eastdevon.gov.uk/planning/planning-policy/cranbrook-plan/get-involved-share-your-views
Do please contact us if you have any queries or would like further information. We would advise that we are contacting you because your details are logged on our planning policy database or you have previously responded to Cranbrook consultation events. If, however, you no longer wish to be contacted by this Council in respect of planning policy documents do please advise us and we will remove your details from our database.”
Yours faithfully
The Cranbrook Team
East Devon District Council
Jobs, how many? It depends on who is doing the counting
Press releases say that 500 jobs have been created at the new Lidl depot in East Devon.
PLEASE note that this is NOT the same as 500 full-time jobs. It is quite possible that many jobs are for a limited number of hours.
Newspapers are sloppy about this. Often the number of promised jobs, when converted to full-time equivalent hours (FTE) can be half this number or even less.
ALWAYS ask “How many full-time equivalent jobs?” and get it in writing from the employer.
When is a lobbyist not a lobbyist? When he’s Swire or meets with Swire?
A correspondent writes:
“Something rather hypocritical about Swire’s comments about transparency and privileged access? Wasn’t privileged access the very reason he said he was a better MP than Claire could have been? [He made this claim when he said he could NOT speak about the local NHS in Parliament but did p
have privileged access to Jeremy Hunt]. Though fat lot of good that did us!
Penultimate paragraph on this link:
“The Tory MP Hugo Swire, a former Foreign Office minister, said in the Commons on Monday that Patel’s meetings raised questions about the influence of lobbyists. “What people want is transparency and accountability. It is time, finally, to address the issue of privileged access and lobbying and funding, if we are not to have this repeating time and time again,” he said.”
Bear in mind that Swire is Chairman of the Conservative Middle East Council and asks MANY, MANY questions on such things as boosting tourism in Egypt and accompanied (and maybe still accompanies) British arms manufacturers on their sales trips.
Is this lobbying? Can an MP lobby?
Or is this lobbying – getting fast access to Ministers – which Swire embraced when he was at the FO?
As Owl keep saying:
“Methinks he doth protest too much”
Stripped back local government and its consequences
“This week, the Grenfell Recovery Taskforce issued its first report into the response of the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea after nine weeks of research. The findings are damning, as anyone following the story would expect, and focus on particular cultural failings in the council that worsened the response.
The report speaks of “a leadership vacuum”, with a “distant council” and a lack of emotional intelligence in dealing with survivors and the community. It says empathy and emotional intelligence need to be put at the heart of its recovery plans. “We have seen many good intentions, which have gone unrecognised by residents,” says the report.
“Often what has been lacking is the appropriate ‘style’ of delivery, where an approach that had empathy at its core would have had greater positive impact. Systems, policies and practice need to be designed with people’s current needs at the heart as opposed to what is good or convenient administrative practice.”
This comment speaks to one of the main failings of the council: to understand what the community needed, not just in terms of temporary accommodation, rehousing and the release of funds, but with regards to people centred response services. Many complained that the council seemed robotic in its responses, focusing on defending its approach rather than accepting and understanding that people viewed its actions as inadequate and working out precisely why.
It was a council that had become insular, disconnected and in particular distant from communities similar to those on the Lancaster West estate. Despite the tragedy being unprecedented, the council appears to have become fixated on behaving as though the recovery could be dealt with within traditional local government frameworks, notes the report, which says the council needs to be bolder.
The taskforce urges the government to encourage a “highly innovative” response responding to residents’ needs, rather than being “bound by tried and tested bureaucratic response systems that are not appropriate in these circumstances”. …
Kensington and Chelsea is an extreme example of the stripped-back local government we now see across Britain. This is due not just to austerity hollowing out council accounts and making it impossible to deliver services, but also to a philosophical shift in the way councils operate. Too many have shifted from providing hands-on, local services with a high level of resident involvement, to an aloof, threadbare service that consists of both councillors and staff who eschew frontline work and meetings for a rigid managerialism and dismissal of residents as obstacles and annoyances. …
Local politics is far closer to everyday lives than national politics; by its very nature, empathy and emotional intelligence are absolutely imperative to a functioning council. It’s tragic that the Grenfell tower fire and external criticisms were necessary for the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea to understand that.”
Public sector workers – here’s your “Pat on the Back”!
Broadband outage and missed appointments compensation
Bet there will be a lot of claims from East Devon! Shame it starts only in 2019.
“Householders who receive poor service from their telecoms provider are to get automatic compensation, the regulator Ofcom has announced.
From 2019 they will get £8 a day if a fault is not fixed, paid as a refund through their bill.
This is less than the £10 that was proposed when Ofcom began its consultation earlier this year.
Providers will also have to pay £5 a day if their broadband or landline is not working on the day it was promised.
If an engineer misses an appointment, they will have to give £25 in compensation.
Ofcom has estimated as many as 2.6 million people could benefit from the new rules. …”
“Fewer social homes being built than at any time since Second World War, official figures reveal”
The article says the Government is concentrating on “affordable homes”. Affordability is calculated at offering a discount of 20% on the average price of other houses on a development. So, if the development has an average cost of £300,000 an affordable home (smaller and usually sited at the least attractive part of a development) would be £240,000. There is no such thing as a private “affordable rent”.
Social housing is built and controlled by councils or housing associations and rents are lower than in the private sector.
“Fewer social homes are being built than at any time since the Second World War, new official figures have revealed.
Government data shows just 5,380 new social homes were completed across England last year – down from 6,800 the previous year.
The number has plummeted from 39,560 in 2010/11 – the year the Conservatives came to power. …
… Responding to the latest figures, Labour said immediate action was needed. John Healey MP, the party’s Shadow Secretary of State for Housing, said: “After the Grenfell Tower fire Theresa May admitted the Conservatives haven’t given enough attention to social housing. These shocking figures show she was right.
“The number of new social rented homes being built is now at the lowest level on record, and the number of new low-cost homes to buy is at just half the level it was under Labour. After seven years of failure on housing the Chancellor must use the Budget to tackle the housing crisis.”
Housing and Planning Minister Alok Sharma said: “These latest figures show progress but we know there is more to do. That’s why we have increased the affordable homes budget to more than £9bn and introduced a wider range of measures to boost building more affordable homes, supporting the different needs of a wide range of people.”
East Devon Watch 