Daily Archives: 27 Jun 2020

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Paul Arnott’s pivotal role in HOTSW governance change – Yesterday

Owl’s Somerset “little birdie” cousins are reporting that Val Keitch, LibDem Leader of South Somerset, has been elected as the Chair of the Heart of the South West (HotSW) Joint Steering Committee to replace Conservative David Fothergill, Leader Somerset County Council.

This move not only represents another defeat for the “entitled” party but also reduces the undue influence of the “Upper Tier” authorities in the governance of our Local Enterprise Partnership to date.

Owl understands that at yesterday’s Joint Steering Group Meeting someone proposed Val Keitch’s nomination where the sitting Chair, David Fothergill, was expected to be a shoo-in. The members are drawn from all the planning authorities in the two Counties (including the unitary ones and the two National Parks) and are widely dispersed (totalling 18). At this point in the virtual meeting there was a chilling silence. Owl understands that this was broken by a quick thinking Paul Arnott, attending his first meeting of this committee as EDDC Leader, who saw an opportunity, seized the moment and seconded her nomination. At that, Owl understands that David Fothergill withdrew his nomination rather than face a vote.  

Game, Set and Match!

At the May 2019 local elections the Conservatives lost control of many local district councils – they retain one in Somerset and only a couple in Devon but hold the two Counties. Plymouth is Labour and Torbay Libdem. So the result was obvious and a lot of Conservatives abstained as they did in the recent EDDC EGMs.

Somerset County Council is the administering authority responsible for providing support to this Joint Committee . There is also a Joint Committee “micro site” but this is woefully out of date. From a public perspective it is not very transparent and Friday’s meeting, with an opportunity for publicspeaking, not well publicised .

Owl has written at length on the inadequate democratic oversight and input to Local Enterprise Partnership, the last was this.

For the moment the “Joint Committee” is as good as it gets, let us hope that the new Chair can make it work for us. (There is a Joint Scrutiny Meeting but it is poorly attended and struggles to be quorate).

Joint Committee Aims

The aim is to provide a single strategic public sector partnership that covers the entire area and provides cohesive, coherent leadership and governance to ensure delivery of the Productivity Strategy for the HotSW area. The specific objectives of the Joint Committee are to:

 (a) Improve the economy and the prospects for the region by bringing together the public, private and education sectors;

 (b) Increase our understanding of the economy and what needs to be done to make it stronger; 

(c) Improve the efficiency and productivity of the public sector; 

(d) Identify and remove barriers to progress and maximise the opportunities /benefits available to the area from current and future government policy. 

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Prime Minister urged to build 30,000 retirement homes

www.constructionenquirer.com 

Boris Johnson looks set to prioritise house building to help boost economic recovery.

But in a letter to the Prime Minister, policy group Homes for Later Living warns that “the recovery drive will be running on empty if the Government doesn’t take urgent action to help the millions of people who want to downsize”.

The letter signed by John Tonkiss (McCarthy & Stone), Spencer J McCarthy (Churchill Retirement Living) and Mark Dickinson (Lifestory Group) sets out the social and economic benefits of building 30,000 new retirement properties a year.

It argues specialist retirement housing must be central to efforts to get the housing market restarted, while also helping ensure that vulnerable people are better protected against future pandemics.

Prioritising a proportion of new homes for an ageing population would stimulate transactions throughout the housing market, helping young families and first-time buyers move onto and up the ladder.

It would also generate savings to the NHS and social care services of £3,500 per person per year as people in specialist retirement properties are less likely to be admitted to hospital and require further care than people in mainstream housing.

This means that building 30,000 more retirement housing dwellings every year for the next 10 years would generate estimated savings across the NHS and social services of £1.4bn per year within a decade.

“Building more specialist retirement housing would be a win-win for the Government.

“It would unlock the housing market, helping older people, young families and first-time buyers. It would also assist with attempts to fix the social care crisis once and for all,” say the housing bosses.

“With the number of older people in England growing significantly, the time to act is now.

“The Government has given the housing market the green light to get moving again and we welcome this. But the risk is that the recovery drive will be running on empty if we don’t take urgent action to help the millions of people who actively want to downsize.”

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Documents cast doubt on Robert Jenrick’s defence

Robert Jenrick’s claim that he did not breach ministerial rules appeared to unravel last night as it emerged that he had instructed planning officials to fast-track a development without declaring a conflict of interest.

Oliver Wright Policy Editor | Billy Kenber (yesterday) www.thetimes.co.uk 
Documents show that the housing secretary told his department to prioritise advice so he could make a decision on the £1 billion housing scheme two days after he had met the Tory donor behind the plan at a Conservative fundraising dinner.

However, he failed to declare the potential conflict of interest until nearly a month later in apparent breach of the ministerial code that requires significant information to be disclosed “as soon as possible” .

Mr Jenrick’s aides have previously claimed that the delay was due to the general election. The document reveals, however, that Mr Jenrick was prepared to intervene in the case during the election period while not disclosing his interest.

The intervention was critical in helping Richard Desmond, the former newspaper owner, to save paying a £40 million fee that he might otherwise have incurred if planning permission had been delayed.

Yesterday Downing Street continued to defend Mr Jenrick despite unease on the back benches. The prime minister’s official spokesman said that Boris Johnson had “full confidence” in him.

Nadhim Zahawi, the business minister, said the documents released on Wednesday proved there was no overt influence exerted by Mr Desmond. Mr Zahawi indicated that anybody could deploy similar tactics to the wealthy businessman. “If people go to a fundraiser in their area for the Conservative Party, they will be sitting next to MPs and people in their local authorities and can interact with different parts of the authority,” he said. He insisted that “the access did not buy this billionaire a decision”.

Yet the emails show that until Mr Jenrick’s intervention, the department had hardly known of the case, with one official tasked with looking into the application stating that “for the life of me I can’t find it on any of our forward look [planning] stuff”.

They disclose that Mr Jenrick was keen for his department to speed up its formal process for reviewing the development plans so it was ready for him to make a decision when the government won the election. It also hints at Mr Desmond’s desire for a decision before January 15 when the local council was due to vote on changes to a community charge that would result in the £40 million fee being levied.

Written by an unnamed official in Mr Jenrick’s office it expresses surprise that a case has been raised with officials during the election purdah period when ministers usually only conduct essential business in the departments. “Morning ( you thought you wouldn’t hear from me over purdah!!!)!” it says. “[The minister] has asked that advice be prepared for the first few days of the new Gov so a decision can be communicated before Xmas. Does this all sound ok?”

Last night Labour demanded Mr Jenrick return to the Commons to explain the discrepancy, warning that “this matter is far from closed”.

Polling for the Times Red Box by Redfield and Wilton Strategies revealed that nearly half of voters believe Mr Jenrick should quit over the saga. Some 46 per cent of all voters believe his position has become untenable, as do 37 per cent of Tory voters.

Questions for the minister

What involvement did No 10 have in Robert Jenrick’s decision to give the go-ahead to the project?
One of Boris Johnson’s last acts as mayor was to give the go-ahead to an earlier development by Richard Desmond. The government has refused to release any documents that may have passed through No 10 that led to Mr Jenrick’s decision.

Who organised the seating plan for the Tory fundraising dinner?
It seems an odd coincidence that the housing secretary happened to be seated next to a Tory donor who was looking for development approval a month later. Yet Tory HQ has refused to give an explanation.

Why did he not declare meeting Mr Desmond immediately?
Mr Jenrick claimed that he raised the issue as soon as he was reconfirmed as housing secretary. During the election campaign, he asked his private office to speed up the application process.

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The Jenrick-Desmond row lays bare the rotten heart of the UK planning system

“The law was broken. There is no argument. At a dinner, a planning minister, Robert Jenrick, sat next to a developer who attempted to lobby him to allow a gigantic £1bn project in London’s Docklands. He then reversed a public decision of his own department, and he expedited it to save the developer, Richard Desmond, some £40m in local levy. His party then accepted an admittedly paltry sum of money from Desmond.”

Simon Jenkins www.theguardian.com

To be fair to Jenrick, he denies none of this and, on legal advice, reversed his decision with lightning speed.

Ministers have resigned for less and have survived far worse. Jenrick’s boss, Boris Johnson, was lobbied by Desmond like mad and backed his scheme. He has since shown he regards sackings as nothing to do with ethics and everything to do with politics. Be loyal and you can do anything you like. In that at least, Johnson is consistent with his own behaviour. To sack Jenrick would be arrant hypocrisy. For Jenrick to go would be merely dignified.

The trouble with planning decisions is that they can seem arbitrary, which means merely matters of opinion. Possibly corrupting factors can always be at play. Jenrick’s Labour critics might reflect on an earlier Docklands development, in which a Labour cabinet minister overrode the grade-one listing of the finest historic docks in Europe, London Docks. He outrageously saw them demolished to favour a developer who also owned the (then) Labour-supporting Sun. The minister was Peter Shore, the docks were in Wapping, and the favour was to a certain Rupert Murdoch.

There is nothing new in the politics of property. Desmond and Jenrick might ask how the Vauxhall Tower got approved, or the Shard, or the Walkie Talkie, in many cases against strong local opposition. Centre Point was the result of a murky LCC deal over a roundabout. Conrad Hilton threatened Harold Macmillan that he would boycott London if prevented from breaking rules against towers around Hyde Park.

Civic vanity is the most potent of planning motives. At present not just London but Manchester, Leeds, Bristol, Middlesbrough and even Norwich are promised random luxury towers that bear no relation to historic setting or social planning, any more than they relieve local housing need. The London property market, in particular, is now chaotic, massively distorted by money laundering and its status as a depository of the world’s spare cash. I am all for a vigorous London economy, but not this way.

Though figures remain wild guesses, it is estimated that 5% of central London homes may now lie empty. Industry experts estimate one-third of high-end flats in central London go to overseas buyers. The Guardian found just 30 of 214 flats in Vauxhall’s Tower had anyone on the electoral roll. This is the market at which Desmond and Jenrick were aiming, either second-home pieds-à-terre or empty investments for overseas buyers. They are about profits, not homes. This is not planning but anti-planning.

Tower Hamlets council can hardly complain. It has accepted the projected Spire London just up Westferry Road from Desmond’s nine-tower scheme, planned to be 67 storeys of more than 800 luxury apartments. The key to the scheme’s approval was a £50m payment by the developer to the council. Desmond, anxious to avoid making such a payment himself, texted Jenrick to say “we don’t want to give Marxists loads of doe [sic] for nothing!” London developers call such sweeteners “legalised bribes”, as they do not go to individuals. After a decade of austerity, hard-pressed councils find it hard to say no. That Tower Hamlets resisted Desmond is the true measure of his project’s monstrosity.

Such banana-republic antics are why planning has always been layered. It begins with local democracy – now the last real discretion left to local people. Local decisions are no less vulnerable to corruption than national ones, but at least they are accountable locally.

Overseeing them is an appeal structure to a Whitehall inspectorate. But this is polluted by ever more intrusive centralised direction, typified by the Jenrick saga. In the case of London tall buildings, it is further complicated by the London mayor being able to overrule a borough decision, even if then overruled by a minister.

The bottom is now falling out of the luxury market. Prices are estimated to be 20% below the peak and declining fast. The huge Earls Court development in west London went belly-up. If the London Spire is also on hold, it may be that Desmond has been saved from a white elephant.

Either way, this affair has exposed the decay of Britain’s urban planning. Central and local government should long ago have called a halt to the reckless boom in foreign investment, one that had nothing to do with domestic housing supply. Absentee owners should have been stopped from building London properties and leaving them empty. If Jenrick really meant his decision was to get “more homes built”, he would have insisted Desmond ensured they were only for UK occupiers in perpetuity. He did not, as it would have wrecked profitability. So he can’t have meant it. Aesthetic and skyline control should have been established for historic centres.

Rumours are now that Jenrick – on the instructions of Dominic Cummings – is proposing to introduce centrally imposed commissions with no local control. It is recipe for planning by legal appeal. The best argument for Jenrick to go is perhaps not what he did, but what he is about to do.

• This article was amended on 26 June 2020 to remove “UK” from a headline reference to “the UK planning system”. Planning is a devolved function.

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Virus patients less likely to die now than at peak of crisis

The death rate for coronavirus patients in English hospitals has fallen to a quarter of the level at the peak of the outbreak, which may mean that doctors are getting better at treating it.

See other explanations here. – Owl

Tom Whipple, Science Editor www.thetimes.co.uk 

Researchers said it was also possible that the data had a less optimistic explanation, possibly reflecting changes in those being admitted to hospital.

At the beginning of April, when there were 15,000 people in hospital with Covid-19, about 6 per cent died. Since then, the number in hospital has fallen by 2.4 per cent a day, meaning numbers have halved every 29 days.

At the same time the number of deaths has reduced by 4.3 per cent a day, meaning that it has halved every 16 days. As a consequence, in the latest figures the hospital death rate has fallen to 1.5 per cent.

Statisticians are struggling to explain the findings, which imply that patients are more likely to survive today than they were three months ago.

Jason Oke, from the University of Oxford, is one of the statisticians behind the UK analysis. He said that they had initially held off from releasing the figures.

“We sat on it. We had a good discussion about it to try and work out all the different ways we could be wrong,” he said. “Then we thought we should put it out there — it’s what we’ve observed. The caveat is, we don’t really understand why this is happening. But it’s happening.”

While one explanation is better treatment, another is that the patients are different. At the beginning of the outbreak, there is evidence that hospitals were more selective about who was admitted. “Maybe early on the pandemic, when we thought we would be overrun, we took only the severest cases.” This would lead to an apparent improvement in the hospital death rate, even if there was no difference in the actual death rate.

Another way in which the make up of coronavirus wards differs is that at the start many of those people infected caught the virus in the hospital itself, meaning they were already sick and vulnerable.

Whether these explain all the findings, said Dr Oke, is impossible to say at the moment. To add to the mystery, the trend matches that in other countries. The US appears to have a falling death rate, while in Italy a study found a significant rise in the likelihood of patients surviving hospital treatment, even after taking account of their age and previous illnesses.

The author of that research was sceptical of the idea that the virus itself had weakened, but suggested that in the unproven cocktail of drugs given to patients might be the basis for an effective treatment.

Dr Oke said the discovery that a commonly-used steroid, dexamethasone, reduced the death rate in severe cases supported the idea that treatment had improved. But, he said, he did not think it could be the whole explanation.

Even so, he added, we should still take hope from the figures. “It would be a lot worse if it was the other way round, and we were having to find ways to explain a trend towards a higher death rate.”

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Planning Applications East Devon week commencing 15 June

Owl mentioned last time the planning applications were listed on the Watch that it is best to wait until well into the following week as the EDDC web list is often not finalised until mid the week following.