Does EDDC ever learn lessons from the past? Many of their decisions don’t seem to stand up to the the test of time.

Owl has just received this from a correspondent:

“EDDC officers paid full asking price for a building that’s been on the market for three years. The white elephant known as the Ocean in Exmouth. £2.7 m wasted to save the bacon of LED the tenant. We already prop up LED with £1.5m borrowing. All with our money.”

The long, sorry, back-story

The Bowling Alley (now the Ocean) was considered, at the beginning of the century, to be the single “Iconic” building that would regenerate Exmouth, rather in the way that the Tate regenerated St Ives. It gained initial planning approval in 2002. But Its construction was dogged by the need subsequently to submit 16 revised plans. During construction the site went on hold for a couple of years so that a court case concerning faulty design aspects could be resolved.

So – 25 June 2013  “Spectacular top-floor bowling alley venue on the way”

Exmouth’s seafront bowling alley is set to create up to 40 new jobs when its new wedding and events venue opens this summer.

Sean Keywood   www.exmouthjournal.co.uk 

Workers are currently putting the finishing touches to the Ocean Blue suite, located on the top floor of the Coast complex on the Esplanade.

As well as a large main function room with a permanent stage and bar area, there are also large roof terraces, with weatherproof speakers, enabling guests to gaze out across the seafront.

The venue will also be obtaining a marriage licence, allowing it to host the whole wedding day, and there will be a bride suite and groom suite provided for the wedding couple to get ready.

Coast is setting up its own wedding service to operate from the venue, and proprietor Isaac Robb says the opening of the new facilities – which will also host other events – is good news for the town.

He said: “It’s a really exciting thing, not just for us but for the whole of Exmouth. We want everybody that has functions or events to come and look at the room.

“We think it’ll sell itself by the views it has. Everybody who sees it just gasps.”

Just by word of mouth, the Ocean Blue suite already has five events booked ahead of its August opening, including a charity casino night in December, and Isaac says he is lining up a “very big musical act” to perform next summer.

As part of the new operation, Coast needs to recruit 30 to 40 staff, ranging from a master of ceremonies, events managers and wedding planners, to chefs, bar and waiting staff.

These jobs will add to the 30 already created at Coast since the ground-floor bowling operation opened at the start of the year.

Anyone interested in applying for the new roles should send their CV to Coast by post.

However, within a couple of years EDDC were having to engineer a take-over.

10 June 2015 LED take over lease of Exmouth sea front facility

The lease of the Ocean bowling and restaurant complex in Esplanade has been taken over by LED Leisure Management.

Daniel Wilkins www.exmouthjournal.co.uk  10 June 2015

LED has announced they will be running the sea front entertainment facility with immediate effect.

The complex will continue to offer 12 lanes of bowling, plus a Bar and Grill and Sega Entertainment Centre, on the ground floor.

Later this month a new soft play area is due to open once the fit-out and staff training is completed.

Ocean will also continue to offer a venue for weddings, conferences and other events.

Councillor Andrew Moulding, chairman of Exmouth Regeneration Programme, said: “This is fantastic news for everyone who lives in Exmouth or who comes to the resort for holidays or leisure.

“This is already a wonderful facility in a prime position on the seafront. With LED management, their ideas and marketing expertise, it promises to be a very popular all-weather attraction for families as well as a place for parties, celebrations and meetings of all kinds.

“I look forward to seeing it go from strength to strength in the coming months and years.”

Now in 2020 you the rate payers appear to have bought it outright

Flybe in trouble as £100m loan rejected amid coronavirus flight slump

Jacob Jarvis  http://www.standard.co.uk

Flybe‘s future has been thrown into doubt after it failed to secure a £100 million loan.

The struggling airline was saved from collapse earlier this year but has been unable to obtain further finance it hoped to secure from the Government.

Flybe has also struggled due to being hit by a slump in bookings since the outbreak of the coronavirus.

People briefed on the regional carrier’s situation told the Financial Times the company only has enough resources to survive “until the end of this month”, the Financial Times reported.

As part of the January rescue deal, it agreed an arrangement to defer tax payments of “less than £10 million” with HM Revenue and Customs, while ministers also agreed to hold a review into Air Passenger Duty (APD).

The structure of APD which adds £26 to the price of most return domestic flights such as those operated by Flybe could be altered in next week’s Budget.

Flybe serves around 170 destinations.

It has a major presence at UK airports such as Aberdeen, Belfast City, Manchester and Southampton and flies the most UK domestic routes between airports outside London.

A Flybe spokesman would not comment on its financial situation.

A Department for Transport spokeswoman said: “We won’t comment on speculation.”

At the time of Flybe’s rescue, rival airlines complained that they should not be penalised for their own success. They said they should also be given a tax holiday.

British Airways owner International Airlines Group claimed the arrangements breached state aid rules.

A series of issues have affected Flybe’s finances. 

These include rising fuel costs, falling demand, competition from road, rail and other airlines, plus a weakening of the pound.

It was bought by a consortium comprising Virgin Atlantic, Stobart Group and Cyrus Capital in February 2019, but has continued to make losses.

Rival Ryanair has predicted the drop in demand for flights due to the coronavirus will result in some European airlines failing in the coming weeks.

Additional reporting by PA. 

So that’s it, the new government doesn’t need farmers. They are antiquated, redundant, whingeing and muddy. We can buy in all our food, Tim Leunig, Treasury adviser and friend of Dominic Cummings, said in an email to the National Food Strategy last month.

Britain needs its farmers more than ever

Alice Thomson  www.thetimes.co.uk 

A second government adviser has suggested the return of lynx so we can rewild Britain and leave it to the big cats. Ardent environmentalists want to plant forests of native trees to replace crops, fields and hedgerows. Militant vegans are pushing for all domesticated farm animals in this country to be phased out.

Farmers can just pack up their diesel tractors and trundle off into the history books, along with wooden ploughs and oxen. They only make up 1.5 per cent of our 21st-century workforce, they moan about the weather, their hunting and shooting hobbies are dubious, and their barns make wonderful rustic conversions.

Yet they manage 69 per cent of the land and produce about half of food consumed in this country. And 60 million people need sustenance. Dr Leunig may insist that Singapore, with its population of five million, can import all its edible produce, but if the coronavirus outbreak has shown us anything it is the importance of food supplies. There may be a run on hand sanitisers and face masks, but as panicked shoppers stocking up in Wuhan and Milan know, all you need in a lockdown is food and water to survive. Even in Britain those with allotments and gardens are feeling relatively smug as they remember the days of post-war rationing.

Almost every tale about plagues and nuclear Armageddon focuses on the desperate search for nourishment, from Daniel Defoe’s A Journal of the Plague Year to Cormac McCarthy’s The Road.

We are already too dependent on food imports. About 30 per cent currently come from the EU and 12 per cent from 160 different countries. A typical biscuit now manufactured in a British factory may contain salt from China, calcium sulphate from India, palm oil from southeast Asia, whey from New Zealand, milk and wheat from the EU, sugar from the Caribbean and cocoa from South America. This makes us highly vulnerable not only to shocks such as pandemics, but also to almost any other kind of global meltdown.

It is also environmentally insane to import so much food by ship and plane from less fertile countries when Britain’s climate provides ideal conditions for farming, as Minette Batters, president of the National Farmers’ Union, points out. We are able to produce in season the majority of our needs except chocolate, coffee, sugar and avocados for our toast. British farmers have already shown that they can go carbon-neutral relatively easily, but if you want an orange from Israel, it needs to offset its airmiles. British farmers also lead the way in animal husbandry, but if we phase out all livestock and poultry we won’t be able to monitor animal welfare abroad for the eggs to go on millennial brunches.

Rewilding is not the easy alternative. This is not land abandonment, “wilding” needs constant maintenance and subsidy, as the Knepp estate in West Sussex where it is being trialled proves. As does forestry. Planting a million trees is easy, the expense lies in their management. They need nurturing and protecting until they reach maturity or they will be attacked by squirrels and deer.

Astonishingly, food production was barely mentioned in the government’s original Agriculture Bill, it was all about improving air quality, access to the countryside, preservation of soil, encouraging wildlife and reducing flooding. They’ve had to revise the bill after this was pointed out, but farmers are increasingly bewildered. They have no idea what their purpose is any more. Professor Michael Winter, a rural policy expert at Exeter University, says farmers are “under attack from ministers, lobbyists, environmentalists and vegans” and are increasingly seen as pariahs rather than providers.

The newly proposed system of farm support moving from direct payments to “public money for public good” is in danger of becoming another universal credit-style fiasco, rushed in too quickly by those who have no idea of the hand-to-mouth existence of many tenant farmers and backed by those rich enough to see farming as a hobby rather than their livelihood.

But farming the land and protecting the environment aren’t mutually exclusive, in fact they could be natural partners. We need farmers to produce basic foodstuffs as well as manage the land. They should be urged while feeding us to diversify, nurture otters and beavers, manage moors and streams, restore biodiversity and encourage the return of nightingales. Experts should be helping them with their agri-environmental schemes.

Farmers are bound up in our sense of national identity. Shakespeare and the Romantics revelled in a countryside that has been cultivated by generations of farmers. They are providing the backdrop for ramblers, holidaymakers and tourists and creating serenity in a hectic world. Beauty, history and heritage are in danger of becoming relegated. It’s not just the wildlife that needs space to breathe.

George Eustice, the new environment secretary, needs to reassure farmers as well as revitalise farming. If they quit, we would have to find new custodians of the countryside and it would be far more damaging than if we got rid of government advisers like Dr Leunig.

Charlotte Turner  www.devonlive.com

Exeter-based Flybe’s request for a £100 million Government loan is set to be scrapped, The Financial Times has reported.

New information has surfaced that the airline’s request for the money has not met certain criteria set by the government according to Whitehall officials.

A potential loan from the state has been on the table for almost two months as a measure to rescue the troubled airline.

The FT also reported that the company’s management is now hoping that a cut to Air Passenger Duty in the Budget will help Flybe to continue to operate.

But in February, it was reported that the new chancellor could throw out the plans for an overhaul of Air Passenger Duty.

Industry sources have said that Rishi Sunak is against a cut to the tax, whereas Mr Javid had supported a reduction to attempt to keep the Exeter-based airline from going down.

Cutting Air Passenger Duty (APD) formed part of the rescue deal discussed by ministers after Flybe came close to collapse in January.

Air passenger duty is a tax on passenger flights from UK airports which was brought in in 1994.

Flybe has reportedly complained for some time that APD of up to £26 per flight disproportionately affects its finances, making its UK low cost short trips less attractive than alternatives.

Flybe was saved from collapse a year ago in February 2019, which saw the airline sold to the Connect Airways consortium, backed by Virgin Atlantic and Stobart Aviation.

Travel experts claim floating on the London Stock Exchange was the start point for many of Flybe’s current issues.

The Devon-based airline has reportedly said that if it were to go under, many of the routes it services would probably be abandoned.

The Financial Times wrote that Flybe’s executives have told the government that 88 of its 120 routes are not flown by any other airline, and that according to rival airlines, Whitehall officials are drawing up plans to ensure routes are kept if Flybe fails.

The Government loan was likely to prove contentious, with government support for Flybe having sparked legal threats from rivals including Ryanair and British Airways’ parent company.

Flybe declined to comment.

Owl believes that when voters removed Conservative overall control at EDDC in last May’s election, they voted for change. Ben Ingham’s regime hasn’t delivered.

Eileen Wragg, East Devon district councillor, Exmouth Journal March 4 2020:

We know that National and Local Governments inherit the legacies left by their predecessors, and that the tangles which are left behind have to be unravelled.

However, for the past four years, I have been asking EDDC, both the previous and the present administrations, where the funding for the new seafront road, reportedly costing £3.1m, was going to come from.

I was told that the contributors would be Devon County Council (DCC) and the Local Enterprise Partnership (LEP) and that their contributions would be match-funded by the national Coastal Communities Fund.

DCC informed me that there would definitely be no financial help from them, similarly the LEP would not be providing any assistance. Therefore, there would be nothing to match-fund it to.
As readers will know, the road has now been built, but the mystery of where the funding has come from remains. At a recent meeting with the projects manager at EDDC, again I asked how the road was being paid for and was told that the actual cost of construction was £600,000, but that with other costs, the final total was £1.5m, less than half of the original stated sum.

Furthermore, I was told by the projects manager that the monies were coming from the Premier Inn development. What?!!

It was widely reported by EDDC that the money from the sale of the Elizabeth Hall had been used to pay for the new Mamhead Slipway.

So the question remains, how is the new road to nowhere being paid for? I asked the question, yet again, at Full Council on February 26, but no-one has unravelled the answer yet.
If councillors are unable to ascertain the truth, is it any wonder that there is mistrust among our constituents? Hence my resorting to writing this column, which might hopefully elicit an explanation. Oh what a tangled web it is!

Residents in the constituency of Devon East are unaccustomed to their MP speaking in parliament on local issues (or indeed speaking at all). Owl thinks they might be interested in reading a small extract from Monday’s Hansard which records Simon Jupp’s intervention and puts it in context.

From an earlier post:

I decided to stand to be a member of the Transport Select Committee and was successfully elected on February 4. I plan to use this new platform to scrutinise the government’s transport plans and highlight the need for investment in the South West. I can’t back HS2 when the main and branch railway lines in Devon simply are not fit for purpose. (Simon Jupp)

High Speed Rail (West Midlands – Crewe) Bill: Revival – Debate Hansard 2nd March extracts:

9.25 pm

Chris Loder (West Dorset) (Con)

As someone who worked in the railway industry for 20 years, I come to this debate from the opposite direction to my hon. Friend the Member for The Cotswolds (Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown). I was a firm supporter of HS2 and believed it was the right thing to do, but I am afraid I have become much more sceptical of the project.

That said, the Government’s decision has been made, and so has the strategy for HS2. West Dorset has one of the worst rail frequencies in the country—the line between ​Yeovil, Dorchester and Weymouth has one of the worst frequencies—and, for those of us in the wider south-west, it is important that the Government Front Bench understands we have great concerns that HS2, and particularly phase 2a, should not deflect the Government’s attention and their requirement to deliver the infrastructure projects we require in the south-west.

Simon Jupp (East Devon) (Con)

Warm words for the south-west are welcome, but cold, hard cash is what is needed. The south-west voted for this Government en masse, and it is time we also saw the chequebook.

Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)

Order. There is very little time left, and I made it clear at the beginning that this is not about other constituencies. The hon. Gentleman can refer to his constituency, but this is about a very specific matter.

Chris Loder

I equally want to make sure that we are as supportive of the Government as possible. Those of us who are moving in this debate need to be absolutely assured so, in his summing up, I would like to hear the Minister give us the confirmation and assurance that HS2, particularly phase 2a, will not affect the Government’s previous commitments to deliver schemes such as the A303 and Great Western diversion resilience for the people who supported them.

……………………

The Minister of State, Department for Transport (Andrew Stephenson)

I should like to reply to as many of the issues raised today as I can while discussing the motion. First, I am grateful to all right hon. and hon. Members who have taken part in the debate this evening. In his speech, the Prime Minister made it clear that things at HS2 need to change, and decisive action is being taken to restore discipline to the programme. I have been appointed to oversee High Speed 2, Northern Powerhouse Rail and the trans-Pennine route upgrade, ensuring that there is one Minister dedicated to focusing on this project, allowing many of the other issues that have ​been raised in the debate, such as the issues in the south-west, to be focused on by my ministerial colleagues in the Department.

This was a highly procedural debate and ended:

Question put and agreed to.

Ordered,

That if a Bill is presented to this House in this session in the same terms as those in which the High Speed Rail (West Midlands – Crewe) Bill stood at the last stage of its proceedings in this House in the 2019 session—

(a) the Bill so presented shall be deemed to have passed through all its stages in this House, and

(b) the Standing Orders and practice of the House applicable to the Bill, so far as complied with or dispensed with in the 2019 session, shall be deemed to have been complied with or (as the case may be) dispensed with in this session.

That the above Orders be Standing Orders of the House.

Comment by Owl: Obviously investment in our region is welcome but who would be the payee on any cheque? Great South West, Heart of the South West or who? And what would they spend it on?

Owl – beware creating sink corners on new estates!

Daniel Clark  www.devonlive.com

Fears over creating a ‘social housing hub’ has led to developers being asked to make changes to plans for 33 new homes on the edge of Exeter.

Applicants Eagle One MMlll had hoped to build 33 new homes on phase 8 of the Redhayes/Tithebarn Green development close to the Exeter Science Park.

Their scheme went before East Devon District Council’s Development Management Committee on Tuesday morning as the Local Plan only allocates 1,500 new homes to be built in the area North of Blackhorse/Redhayes, but granting this application would have taken the number to 1,513.

However while the additional 13 homes did not unduly concern the committee, they were unhappy with the eight affordable homes being ‘stuck in the corner’.

Chris Rose, the council’s Development Manager, told the committee that while council policy says that affordable housing should be ‘pepper-potted’ across the development, the registered provider had preferred the affordable units are all located in the North West corner and are not dispersed throughout the development ‘for ease of maintenance’ and had declined to move them to the western boundary of the site.

But Cllr Paul Hayward said that it was not as if they would have to travel immense distance and this was just creating a social housing hub.

He added: “This looks to be developers building a new private estate and they are obliged to have some affordable, so they cram them in the corner in an antisocial way so it doesn’t affect the viability of the rest of the site.

“It is an attempt to keep the residents in the social blocks away from everyone else. By deliberately sticking them in a corner, they are still stuck in a corner, and can leave and go without ever bothering anyone else in the development. This is unacceptable.”

He called for the application to be deferred to allow for some material changes to the layout of the site to take place, including more amenity space or more pepper potting of the affordable housing units.

Cllr Eileen Wragg had called for the committee to refuse the application, calling the developer’s reasons for not ‘pepper-potting’ were disingenuous, but Henry Gordon Lennox, the council’s Strategic Lead for Governance and Licensing, said that a deferral to allow further negotiations rather than the refusal route would be the better route to go down, and that if they still didn’t agree to any changes then the committee could then decide to refuse.

Cllr David Key said that it would be ‘ridiculous’ to refuse when negotiations with the applicants could overcome the problems, and that if they won any appeal, ‘they can do what they want and we’ve lost everything’.

The proposal to refuse the application was lost by 11 votes to three, with councillors then voting by 13 votes to one abstention to defer the application to allow further discussions over the layout of the development and over issues of biodiversity to take place.