Owl is having difficulty understanding how Tories can be the “official opposition” if one of their members chairs a current influential committee (Mike Howe, Development Management).
If East devon Alliance, Lib Dems and Greens got together they would have one more member than Tories … not that this will happen, but just saying …
Surely you can’t oppose what you have just inserted yourselves into?
https://www.devonlive.com/news/devon-news/independents-take-control-east-devon-2898391
Read it if you must (it reminds Owl somewhat of a Leader’s speech from Paul Diviani in the past promising a “lean, green and seen administration)
but Councillor Susie Bond, deputy leader, put it most succinctly:
” … Our first priority is to provide continuity, ensuring the council functions better than ever. …”
So, continuity … not sure that’s what people voted for when the voted for members of the Independent Group.
Watch that space!
Comment by Paul Arnott:
“Dear Owl
Just two points of information re the above (this was a comment on the post regarding the chairing of the Development Management Committee:
a) Mike Howe is already a much-admired chair of Development Management, and as someone who believes in the best person for the job whatever political background I have no personal problem with his continuing
b) Independent East Devon Alliance councillors were ready, willing and eager to become as many Cabinet members or committee heads as we were asked to be, but the Leader of the Independent Group, now of the Council, Ben Ingham, refused to consider us.
all best
Paul Arnott”
From Facebook page of Paul Haywood, EDDC East Devon Alliance councillor for Yarty:
OK, we now refer to the ruling group at EDDC as
“TiggerTories”
a coalition of a mix of western-side “Independents” with western-side Tories.
And the Tiggers couldn’t even find ONE of their “independents” to chair the Development Management Committee!
Tory Mike Howe now holds the casting vote if the committee splits 50/50 on anything …
Unbelievable!
No representation at all for East Devon Alliance members, except Val Ranger for symbolic appountment as Deputy Chairman. Lib Dems totally excluded too.
Stuart Hughes (Tory) voted in as new Chairman – unopposed and nominated by Independent Ben Ingham and seconded by Tory Phil Twiss!
Says it all really …
Vice-Chairman Val Ranger – EDA
New Leader – Ben Ingham – Independent Group, Exmouth
New deputy leader – Susie Bond – Independent Group, Feniton
Committee chairmen:
Overview – Nick Hookway – Independent Group, Exmouth
Scrutiny – Alan Dent – Tory, Budleigh
Housing Review Board – Tony McCollum – Independent Group, Honiton
Strategic Planning Committee – Susie Bond – Independent Group, Feniton
Development Management Committee – Mike Howe – Tory, Clyst Valley
Audit and Governance – Sam Hawkins, IndeGroyp, Cranbrook
Standards – Stuart Hughes – Tory, Sidmouth Sidford
Interviewing (chief officers) – Ben Ingham, Independent Group, Exmouth
Employment Appeals – Susie Bond – Independent Group, Feniton
Licensing and Enforcement – Paul Jarvis – Independent Group, Budleigh
So, first day – sold out.
Owl knew it had to keep an eye on this lot …
A bad, bad day for East Devon.
As Owl has been saying for YEARS – THESE EMPERORS HAVE NO CLOTHES!!!!! Neither do they have transparency or accountability.
It’s verging on the corrupt, definitely a conflict of interest and is certainly unethical – it means a very, very few business people, taking no risks for themselves or their businesses, divvying up OUR money for their own pet projects, with almost no oversight from the councils they have robbed of funds and no loss for them if projects fail or over-run in time or cost.
A national scandal.
“Private sector firms are not matching public sector funding for local regeneration, senior civil servants have admitted.
Two senior civil servants at the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government told MPs on Parliament’s Public Accounts Committee (PAC) that cash from the EU, public sector and higher education are still the main sources for funding regional development projects.
The department’s permanent secretary Melanie Dawes and director general Simon Ridley said match funding for the £9.1bn Local Growth Fund is largely dependent on match funding from councils and other public bodies.
Ridley also admitted there were still challenges over transparency and the boundaries of some Local Enterprise Partnerships (LEPs).
The LEPs were set up following the abolition of regional development agencies with the idea that they would be a partnership between business and local government – with an expectation that firms would help funding regional regeneration.
Ridley told the committee that the main private sector input into the LEPs is the time and expertise of board members who work for free.
Committee member Anne Marie Morris said: “Clearly, you are having the private sector involved, so how come you haven’t got a significant financial commitment from them?”
Ridley responded: “The capacity funding we give requires match from the LEP in different ways.
“A large number of business people on the boards do it without renumeration. A lot of the capacity support around the accountable body that the local authority provides is paid for by the LEP.
“Our core expectation was to set up partnerships between the private sector and local government to think about local area development.
“Some of those funding streams are matched by private sector funding schemes.”
Committee chair Meg Hillier asked if developers and construction firms were giving over and above Section 106 contributions to enable projects.
She said: “There is a danger that without having any skin in the game, businesses can walk away and local taxpayers end up picking up the bill.”
Ridley replied: “What the LEP is seeking to do is bring forward projects in the local area that wouldn’t otherwise be coming forward.
“They are often funded by more than one funding stream from the public sector.”
The committee also challenged the pair over a claim that LEPs tended to go to the top-five local employers and as a result, other firms were being left out of key decisions.
Oxford University has become a major decision-maker for its LEP, the committee heard.
Committee member Layla Moran asked: “How do we know that everyone who is a stakeholder in this money is actually involved in the decision?”
Hillier also questioned if the LEPs were accountable, citing Oxfordshire, where meetings were not being held in public.
Dawes said the use of scores in the LEPs annual performance review were conditional for funding being released and this had impacted on responses.
She said: “The real test is how it feels for local communities and I think that’s something that’s very difficult for us to judge in central government. We are on a bit of a journey here. It’s going to take a while.”
Ridley said local authorities had a crucial role in oversight, specifically through Section 151 officers who are ideally placed to deal with complaints.
He said: “All LEPs have got their complaints procedures. We have a clearer role realisation with the accountable body and the 151 officer, so they [the public] might write to them.
“The section 151 officer does have to get all the information that goes to the LEP board. I can’t personally here guarantee that absolutely all of that is in front of every scrutiny committee.”
Dawes confirmed the department has no metrics for assessing complaints being made about the LEPs.
MPs also raised concern about territorial battles between LEPs and combined authorities.
Decisions have still yet to be made about the boundaries in nine LEPs.
Dawes told the committee: “There are legitimate reasons why these geography questions are there. We are working actively with them.
“What ministers will have to work through is whether to impose a decision centrally.
“That would be a matter of last resort.”
Few people will recall Tom Lehrer – mathematician, singer-songwriter and satirist, best known for the pithy, humorous songs that he recorded in the 1950s and 1960s. This is what he had to say about pollution all those years ago:
He is still alive (now 93) and has no worries about people reproducing any of his songs and has no interest in copyright.
These are the lyrics of the above song:
Dear Independents,
We have put our trust in you to be radically different to how local politics has been done for the last 45 years.
You have promised – and we expect: honesty, transparency and accountability.
We expect new, better ways of doing things. We expect residents to be put first – since you have no party politics to drag you, and us, down.
We expect to see a council that is in firm but fair control of its officers as they show them these new ways and insist on them being tried out.
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/the-7-principles-of-public-life
No doubt sonetimes you will fail. If so, be honest, own up to it and fix it.
You can make the transformation we crave.
Make it work – for us as East Devonians and for you as individuals.
Stick with the Nolan principles of public life:
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/the-7-principles-of-public-life
Nothing less.
We know you can do it, now show us we are right to put our trust in you.
Owl
“A leading United Nations poverty expert has compared Conservative welfare policies to the creation of 19th-century workhouses and warned that unless austerity is ended, the UK’s poorest people face lives that are “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short”.
In his final report on the impact of austerity on human rights in the UK, Philip Alston, the UN rapporteur on extreme poverty, accused ministers of being in a state of denial about the impact of policies, including the rollout of universal credit, since 2010. He accused them of the “systematic immiseration of a significant part of the British population” and warned that worse could be yet to come for the most vulnerable, who face “a major adverse impact” if Brexit proceeds. He said leaving the EU was “a tragic distraction from the social and economic policies shaping a Britain that it’s hard to believe any political parties really want”.
The New York-based lawyer’s findings, published on Wednesday, follows a two-week fact-finding mission in November after which he angered ministers by calling child poverty in Britain “not just a disgrace but a social calamity and an economic disaster”. Now he has accused them of refusing to debate the issues he raised and instead deploying “window dressing to minimise political fallout” by insisting the country is enjoying record lows in absolute poverty, children in workless households and low unemployment.
The “endlessly repeated” mantra about rising employment overlooks that “close to 40% of children are predicted to be living in poverty two years from now, 16% of people over 65 live in relative poverty and millions of those who are in work are dependent upon various forms of charity to cope”, he said. …
In his most barbed swipe at Rudd and her predecessors in charge of welfare, he said: “It might seem to some observers that the department of work and pensions has been tasked with designing a digital and sanitised version of the 19th-century workhouse, made infamous by Charles Dickens.”
He said he had met people who had sold sex for money and joined gangs to avoid destitution.
[Owl won’t bother wirh the Tory responses …. predictable … everyone happy … no problems … only we can …. the usual drivel …]
Alston will present his report to the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva next month and will argue that successive Conservative-led governments persisted with austerity and welfare cuts amid high levels of employment and a growing economy despite evidence that large-scale poverty was persisting. In doing so, “much of the glue that has held British society together since the second world war has been deliberately removed and replaced with a harsh and uncaring ethos … British compassion has been replaced by a punitive, mean-spirited and often callous approach apparently designed to impose a rigid order on the lives of those least capable of coping.”
The report slams the government’s austerity programme, with criticisms of “shocking” rises in the use of food banks and rough sleeping, falling life expectancy for some, the “decimation” of legal aid, the denial of benefits to the severely disabled, falling teachers’ salaries in real terms and the impoverishment of single mothers and people with mental illness.
Alston said austerity had “deliberately gutted” local authorities, shrinking library, youth, police and park services to the extent that it was not surprising there were “unheard-of levels of loneliness and isolation”.
There was some praise for ministers for increases in work allowances under the universal credit welfare system and supporting the national minimum wage, but Alston said these measures had had not stopped the “dramatic decline in the fortunes of the least well-off”.
He recommended ministers reverse local government funding cuts, scrap the benefits cap, eliminate the five-week delay in receiving initial universal credit benefits and rethink the privatisation of services including rural transport.
“Thomas Hobbes observed long ago, such an approach condemns the least well-off to lives that are ‘solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short’,” he said. “As the British social contract slowly evaporates, Hobbes’ prediction risks becoming the new reality.”
Owl says: When will politicians discover common sense?
“Ministers must set out a national strategy for buses and extend franchising powers to all local authorities to halt an alarming decline in usage, MPs have said.
A lack of clear policy and a funding squeeze have contributed to the loss of thousands of local buses, worsening congestion, air quality and access to jobs, according to the transport select committee.
The committee has called on the government to draw up a long-term plan by the end of 2020 to support a sector that provides the majority of public transport. It said it should set out clear funding commitments and targets for a “modal shift” to bring car drivers and passengers back on to buses.
Public subsidy accounts for more than 40% of income for buses. Despite the scale of investment, the committee said a “fairer deal for the bus user” was needed that would demonstrate value for money for taxpayers and farepayers and reflect passengers’ needs.
More than 3,000 bus routes in England have been axed or reduced since 2010, according to the Campaign for Better Transport, while Department for Transport figures have shown a recent decline in passenger numbers after years of growth.
The committee chair, Lilian Greenwood, said the decline in services had “direct consequences”, affecting journeys to work, education and social events. “It narrows our transport options and pushes us towards less environmentally friendly choices. And yet our inquiry found no real evidence that the government was determined to take action to stop this.”
Passengers’ groups told the committee that simple, accurate information on ticketing and fares and service timings would increase take-up. The committee called for more concessionary fares to encourage younger people to use buses.
The report questioned why reforms that opened the way for some cities to control bus services had not been extended universally. London was exempt from deregulation of buses in the 1980s, and now metro mayors have been given powers to re-establish regulation. The report said the government should make all operating models, including franchising and the ability to create new municipal bus companies, available to every local authority.
Campaigners welcomed the report. Pascale Robinson, of Better Buses for Greater Manchester, said: “Everywhere should be able to have a franchised system. One place where the policy is in place to get a London-style bus network is in Greater Manchester, and we’re urging Andy Burnham to take up this opportunity now to get buses that work for our communities, not bus company shareholders.”
The Campaign to Protect Rural England said it strongly supported the committee’s call for a national bus strategy to help reduce carbon emissions and tackle rural isolation.
A DfT spokeswoman said the government recognised “the importance of the bus industry in connecting local communities, reducing congestion and improving air quality”. She said funding for councils had increased by £1bn and passengers would have better access to real-time information on fares, routes and services.
Labour said the Conservatives had neglected buses, damaging communities. The shadow transport secretary, Andy McDonald, said: “Labour would end austerity for bus services, delivering the funding to reverse over 3,000 route cuts and invest in new services … and give all local authorities the power to bring services under public control.”
Tories draft law to protect MPs if parties overspend
“Conservative ministers are drawing up a new law to protect MPs and party officials from prosecution if their national parties overspend during elections, leaked documents disclose.
It follows the conviction in January of Marion Little, a Tory party organiser from head office, and the acquittal of the MP Craig Mackinlay after they were accused of breaking electoral law as the party fought off a challenge from Nigel Farage in Thanet South. …
Transparency campaigners believe the government’s latest move is an attempt to avoid future prosecutions and would overturn a ruling by the supreme court.
Alexandra Runswick, the director of Unlock Democracy, said a “test of authorisation” would give candidates and party officials another level of defence from prosecution. “Such a move would not appear to be about reinforcing and strengthening electoral law. This would instead protect party candidates and open up the possibility of outspending rivals.”
Plans for a new law have emerged in correspondence seen by the Guardian and sent to cabinet ministers by Kevin Foster, the minister for the constitution.
“Legislation currently requires candidates to account for free or discounted goods or services that are made use of by or on behalf of the candidate. There have been calls to amend this legislation to include a test of authorisation by or on behalf of the candidate,” he wrote.
Foster told members of a cabinet subcommittee that the law on notional expenditure was tested in July when the supreme court ruled that the statutory requirement for an election candidate is to declare notional expenditure incurred on their behalf during a campaign. This might arise where a national party provided additional campaigning support in the constituency and was not limited to authorised campaigning.
Foster wrote: “There is a concern that candidates, their electoral agents and others acting on their behalf could be operating under legal risk. I am seeking the committee’s agreement to announce at an appropriate time that the government is exploring options to clarify the law on notional expenditure to alleviate the concerns highlighted. Any amendments in this area of law would require primary legislation,” he wrote.
Little, who had been employed by Tory campaign headquarters since 1974, was charged with three counts of encouraging or assisting an offence related to the filing of election expenses. …”
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/may/21/tories-draft-law-protect-mps-party-overspend
“Oxford City Council is to be the first UK local authority to establish a citizens assembly to help address the issue of climate change, and consider the measures that should be taken in Oxford.
The recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report warned that the current global target of 80% cut in carbon emissions by 2050 is not enough to avert catastrophic temperature change. It said it’s essential that global temperature change is limited to 1.5 degrees Celsius and that rapid, far-reaching and unprecedented changes in all aspects of society are required to ensure this.
Next week the UK’s independent Committee on Climate Change (CCC) will publish its advice to the UK Government on tightening Britain’s carbon reduction targets. This will lead to new minimum requirements for us all.
In January, Oxford City Council members unanimously declared a climate emergency and agreed to create a citizens assembly in Oxford to help consider new carbon targets and additional measures to reduce emissions.
The citizens assembly will involve a randomly-selected representative sample of Oxford residents and will meet in September. It will be the first citizens assembly in the UK created to consider climate change.
The City Council will be commissioning research to develop options and timescales for carbon reduction in areas such as housing and transport, which will be put to the citizens assembly. In addition, it will hear from a range of independent contributors. The citizens assembly’s recommendations will assist the City Council in its final decisions on adoption of carbon abatement measures and targets. …”
Rewilding would (according to the Environment Secretary) focus on:
Native woodlands
Salt marshes
Peat bogs
Ponds and lakes
Meadows and grasslands
all of which we have in abundance in East Devon.
Perhaps it is now time to revive the idea of a Jurassic Coast National Park (West Dorset would be an already-enthusiastic partner) which was squashed by the previous council because they feared losing their cosy relationship with housing developers …
And, as part of our climate emergency, make rewilding an integral part of all future neighbourhood, district and Greater Exeter development plans.
Peter Quincey – who was in charge of operations for Exmouth seafront and the long-stalled St Margaret’s School site in Exeter – has sold his shares and left the company on 29 April 2019. Quincey had previously worked for Devon County Council. He had resigned from another Grenadier company last June:
https://beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/officers/qBoe3oxzmWj2MAtlo_sQ0U7lWtk/appointments
Pauline Stott and John Mark Williamson are still shown as active directors of Queen’s Drive Exmouth Community Interest Company along with Glenn Woodcock of Grenadier, who replaced Peter Quincey on 29 April 2019 and who holds 16 directorships, mostly in Grenadier companies:
https://beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/company/11017649/officers
though Owl assumes Mrs Stott and Mr Williamson will be replaced by current independent councillors, perhaps as early as tomorrow, as they are no longer councillors.
Owl suspects that – with the seafront still a building site – new Councillors may be inheriting a bit of a mess. And do recall that, as part of their contract, Grenadier must commence their seafront project within 4 days of the Queen’s Drive road completion and sign-off.
“Headteachers have spoken out about the hardship their students are facing in the wake of a Human Rights Watch report that highlighted the growing number of children in the UK going hungry.
Those working in schools said hunger had led to children stealing sachets of ketchup and exhibiting noticeable weight loss. They said that levels of poverty meant some schools had to provide breakfast clubs, food banks and clothes for pupils.
Geoff Barton, a former secondary school headteacher who leads the Association of School and College Leaders, described the situation as “astonishing” and “a national shame.” He added that tackling food poverty was becoming a main priority for a number of headteachers.
“The most striking conversation I had last year was with a group of headteachers in Lancashire – mostly secondary heads,” Barton said. “I asked what the biggest issue they were facing was, and usually they say funding or recruitment and retention. But the number one issue they said was hungry children. They were spending the first half of the day making sure children had breakfast. It’s shaming.”
Human Rights Watch, the New York-based NGO, accused the UK government of breaching its international duty to keep people from hunger by pursuing “cruel and harmful policies” with no regard for the impact on children living in poverty.
The report concluded that tens of thousands of families did not have enough to eat, revealing that schools in Oxford were the latest to have turned to food banks to feed their pupils. The government dismissed the findings, saying it was misleading to present them as representative of the whole country.
Barton said: “The fact you even have some schools having to provide something as basic as food and becoming surrogate food banks … should leave us all with sense of national shame.” …
The shadow education secretary, Angela Rayner, said: “All too often I’m hearing that schools are now acting as a fourth emergency service, forced to step in because the Tories have cut society’s safety net to shreds. It is a scandal that, in one of the richest countries in the world, there are children struggling to learn because of poverty and hunger.
“Our schools have suffered from years of cuts and are themselves increasingly relying on donations from parents. Cuts to public services and social security have combined with low pay, insecure work and rising costs to leave too many families on the breadline. It’s clear that, despite this prime minister’s claims, austerity is far from over for our children.
“A Labour government will take action, investing in the support children need and providing a free healthy school meal to all primary school pupils, so no one goes hungry at school.”
A government spokesperson said the HRW report was not representative of England as a whole, adding: “We spend £95bn a year on working age benefits and we’re supporting over 1 million of the country’s most disadvantaged children through free school meals. Meanwhile, we’ve confirmed that the benefit freeze will end next year.”
Elections for various posts will take place at the Annual Council meeting on WEDNESDAY (Blackdown House, Honiton, 6pm) where Leader, Chairman etc will be revealed.
Then the interesting bit.
How representative will the new cabinet be of different types of independents?
Jobs for the boys/girls or best man/woman for the job?
Will Greens or Lib Dems get a seat at the table?
Will it be loaded geographically to one side of East Devon or spread out equally?
Who will lead the influential Development Management Committee?
Who will represent EDDC at Greater Exeter Strategic Plan meetings?
Who will the MINORITY Conservative leader be?
Who will chair the Scrutiny Committee?
So many questions!
“Human Rights Watch (HRW) has accused the UK government of breaching its international duty to keep people from hunger by pursuing “cruel and harmful polices” with no regard for the impact on children living in poverty.
Examining family poverty in Hull, Cambridgeshire and Oxford, it concluded that tens of thousands of families do not have enough to eat. And it revealed that schools in Oxford are the latest to have turned to food banks to feed their pupils.
In a damning 115-page report that echoes previous expert condemnation of the UK’s policies on food poverty, the NGO – better known for documenting abuses from Myanmar to Haiti – said that the government was breaching its obligations under human rights law to ensure people have enough food.
Volunteers and staff at schools in Oxford confirmed that they were now reliant on donations, saying that teachers were noticing pupils who were missing meals at home and needed to be fed.
HRW said that ministers had “largely ignored growing evidence of a stark deterioration in the standard of living for the country’s poorest residents, including skyrocketing food bank use, and multiple reports from school officials that many more children are arriving at school hungry and unable to concentrate”.
The report will provide further ammunition to those who say that the government is failing in its duty to the poorest. It comes before Wednesday’s release of the final report on the UK by Philip Alston, the United Nations rapporteur on extreme poverty, who has already highlighted the same issues in his interim findings, following a two-week tour of the UK last November.
The report, which will appear on the eve of the European parliamentary elections, is likely to echo Alston’s warning last month that the political preoccupation with Brexit meant that issues like poverty are being ignored in a way that will leave the country “severely diminished”. Alston said: “You are really screwing yourselves royally for the future by producing a substandard workforce and children that are malnourished.”
The government dismissed the findings, saying that it was misleading to present them as representative of the whole country, and said it is helping parents back into work to reduce poverty and is ending the benefit freeze next year. …
Kartik Raj, the author of the HRW report, said growing hunger was “a troubling development in the world’s fifth largest economy”. He said: “Standing aside and relying on charities to pick up the pieces of its cruel and harmful policies is unacceptable. The UK government needs to take urgent and concerted action to ensure that its poorest residents aren’t forced to go hungry.”
“MORE THAN 2,500 post offices will be wiped out within a year unless ministers intervene, a trade body is warning.
Business Secretary Greg Clark was last night told communities across the UK face “catastrophe” without Government action.
In a blistering report, the National Federation of SubPostmasters (NFSP) warns that the Post Office network is “beyond tipping point” and urgent support is required to keep almost one in four branches going.
The Federation says a “digital” first approach by ministers means that revenue from providing Government services such as DVLA forms has collapsed from £576 million in 2005 to just £99 million in 2018.
And it says Royal Mail appears more interested in dealing directly with the public over the web than supporting the network.
Some 98 per cent of Post Offices are run by franchisees or ‘SubPostmasters’, with many vital for smaller towns or villages. There are 9,300 branches employing approximately 40,000 people.
‘BEYOND TIPPING POINT’
Calum Greenhow, NFSP chief said: “The viability of sub post offices and the morale of sub postmasters has been eroded to the extent that the network’s resilience is extremely limited.
“We believe a tipping point has been passed and the consequences of this are now being realised.”
He added: “SubPostmasters are resigning in high numbers because it is increasingly difficult to make a decent living.
“The closure of 2,500 post offices in a year would be a catastrophic loss to communities across the UK.”
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/9109911/post-offices-close-one-year-report-warns/
East Devon Watch 