From a correspondent

I see that EDDC are announcing ‘running totals’ regarding Local Plan consultation responses, three weeks before the consultation is over.   That can’t be right.    I’ve never seen that before.

I understand the desire to get people to respond to the consultation ( is everyone tired of these things, I wonder, and responses are not coming in?  ).   It is also a very lengthy document – not badly written but turgid, and therefore off-putting.    But I think announcing the score halfway through is very unusual.  We don’t want to break the usual conventions of a Local Plan before we even start:  that’s what went wrong last time!

It is possible that an inspector might declare the consultation invalid if the results are declared halfway through.

I’m probably being unnecessarily thin-skinned.   And it is very likely that I am getting too old…

If Mark Williams needs a reminder about what a dysfunctional local authority really looks like, he need look no further than this gem from the glory days of EDDC’s finest Tory administration – when, we presume, he felt more comfortable…

[From a comment posted today – Owl]

The strapline reads: “Extraordinary. Unexpected. Fantastic. A Beacon of Hope: The UK Vaccine Story. Coming soon.”

As Owl expected this is an example of the “Dick Barton” Gambit: “with one bound they are free!”. Or are they?

“Extraordinary. Unexpected. Fantastic.”

A Beacon of Hope: The UK Vaccine Story.

Coming soon. pic.twitter.com/G8SQYhDp5F

— UK Prime Minister (@10DowningStreet) March 10, 2021

Labour condemns taxpayer funding of jab film that could boost local Tory votes

Heather Stewart http://www.theguardian.com 

Labour has condemned the government for using taxpayers’ money to produce a documentary about the vaccine rollout entitled “A Beacon of Hope”, as party strategists fear the Tories will benefit from a “vaccine bounce” in May’s local elections.

Downing Street tweeted a short video on Wednesday, featuring clips of interviews with Chris Whitty and Jonathan Van-Tam, as well as Boris Johnson and Matt Hancock.

The strapline read: “Extraordinary. Unexpected. Fantastic. A Beacon of Hope: The UK Vaccine Story. Coming soon.”

With a bumper set of elections due to be held on 6 May, Labour suspects the government of trying to turn the feelgood factor from the vaccination programme and the lifting of lockdown restrictions to its political advantage.

“The government must come clean about how much taxpayers’ money was spent making this ‘documentary’ and for what purpose,” the deputy Labour leader, Angela Rayner, said.

“Sorry for the spoiler, but we already know the plot twist will be the prime minister choosing to cut the pay of the same nurses delivering the vaccine to the British people, while handing out billions in contracts to Conservative party donors and cronies.”

A No 10 source conceded that the film was taxpayer-funded, but stressed that it was made in-house, as a thank you to those involved in the successful programme, which has seen 22.8m people receive their first dose.

“Purdah” rules preclude the government from using official resources to produce party political material during pre-election periods. The government has not yet announced when that period will begin in relation to the local elections, but it is expected to be later this month or in early April.

The row about the glossy video came as Keir Starmer prepares to launch Labour’s campaign for May’s elections, using the government’s plan for a 1% NHS pay rise as a political dividing line.

The SNP is hoping to secure a pro-independence majority at Holyrood in the 6 May elections, while all 60 seats in the Welsh Senedd are up for grabs, as well as a string of metro mayoralties and local councils in England.

Starmer will launch Labour’s campaign at a virtual event on Thursday where he will speak alongside the new Scottish Labour leader, Anas Sarwar, the Welsh first minister, Mark Drakeford, and other senior party figures.

His team believe the government’s recommendation that only a 1% pay increase for NHS workers in England is affordable is a damaging misreading of the public mood in the wake of the pandemic.

He says: “I will be working alongside our local authorities to ensure every town and community across Tiverton and Honiton gets their fair share of funding.”

Neil Parish www.devonlive.com

NEIL PARISH IS THE CONSERVATIVE MP FOR TIVERTON AND HONITON

On Tuesday, I spoke in the Budget debate. Support for jobs and livelihoods was front and centre of the Chancellor’s statement – and rightly so.

The expansion of the self-employed income support scheme was particularly welcome news – providing aid to an additional 600,000 people who were newly self-employed last year. From self-employed barbers, to driving instructors and tutors, this grant money is a lifeline. I had written to the Chancellor to ask for the inclusion of those excluded last year, and this money goes some way to doing just that.

Businesses too are set to receive additional relief funding. Restart Grants of up to £18,000 are being made available, alongside an extension of the business rates holiday and the reduced rate of VAT. Alcohol and fuel duty has also been frozen for a second year in a row. Cutting these taxes and providing cash boosts will help Devon’s many tourism and hospitality businesses, including hotels, pubs, and wedding venues, to recover.

The Chancellor is also right to extend the Universal Credit uplift for a further six months. While millions of jobs have been protected, record numbers of people have had to rely on social security to get by. Universal Credit has been critical for countering the financial hardships experienced during the pandemic and it is right we continue to bolster this support.

As we build back better from coronavirus, I also want to see further innovation in our economy to create a “Green Industrial Revolution”. I welcome the announcement of the new ‘super-deduction’, rewarding businesses for investing in greener, more efficient machinery. But I also want to see it apply to new fishing boats, reducing the cost of restoring our fleets, creating jobs in this country and making fishing greener and safer for our fishers in the South West.

The Green Homes Grant is another fantastic example of how the Government can spur a green recovery, delivering subsidies for energy-saving home improvements. However, doubt hangs over the scheme. As I pointed out this week, Treasury ministers would be wise to extend and expand this support as we search for an investment-led, carbon-slashing recovery.

And as people strive to return to normality this Spring, further investment is needed in our communities. “Levelling up Britain”, as the Prime Minister has said, is key to building a fairer economy. That’s why I am delighted £4.8 billion has just been committed for the “Levelling Up Fund”- delivering investment for improvements to transport, town centres and cultural and heritage sites. Such funding will be vital for strengthening Devon’s recovery efforts and building a resilient local economy for the future.

The Chancellor and his team have worked tirelessly, in tough circumstances, to ensure people have access to financial help, whilst encouraging investment and growth in our economy. In the coming months, I will be working alongside our local authorities to ensure every town and community across Tiverton and Honiton gets their fair share of funding.

The pandemic has a habit of bringing hidden social crises into the open. Now it reveals the precarious position of local government, the provider of vital services from care homes to public health and bin collection, which has helped keep the show on the road in the UK’s biggest national emergency since the second world war.

Patrick Butler www.theguardian.com 

The National Audit Office (NAO) account of the near implosion of England’s local councils during Covid is sobering: only by the government’s swift, if grudging, injection of billions of pounds of emergency cash into council coffers over recent months did ministers avert what the auditors call “system-wide financial failure”.

The watchdog rightly praises ministers for this: the consequences of scores of local authorities having to declare bankruptcy in the middle of lockdown are frightening. But it makes two other points: first, that 10 years of austerity made municipal finances structurally fragile; and second, that councils’ budget crisis isn’t over.

It makes clear successive Tory governments not only dismantled the town hall roof but failed to fix it by the time hurricane Covid blew in. Council spending was cut by a third, rising demand for social care was ignored and council budgets made reliant on the whims of local income, whether council tax or car parking charges.

Grand, longstanding government plans to reform local government and social care funding failed to materialise. For years, councils patched up their threadbare budgets by using up financial reserves and cutting frontline services. The more ambitious borrowed billions to spend on risky office and retail investments.

So when Covid arrived, council spending rocketed, income crashed and many found they had little in the way of rainy-day cash reserves. As the NAO puts it: “Funding reductions … means that authorities’ finances were potentially more vulnerable to the impact of the pandemic that they would have been otherwise.”

Only one council – Croydon – went bust this financial year. Yet at least seven more have had or asked for government bailouts to head off insolvency. When the NAO surveyed councils in December, it assessed that 25 were at acute or high risk of financial failure, and a further 92 at medium risk of insolvency.

One bailout loan recipient, Luton, was reliant on a £33m-a-year dividend from its ownership of Luton airport to pay for its core services. When Covid brought air travel to an abrupt halt, so the council’s finances collapsed. In July it pushed through £17m of service cuts to stay afloat. Even that, it seems, was not quite enough.

The government has encouraged councils to quietly come to it for help, rather than unilaterally declare insolvency. Wary perhaps of the alarming optics of a long line of council leaders queueing up for rescue funds, it refuses to say how many councils have approached it for emergency bailouts.

The NAO makes it clear the future is uncertain. Many councils have little confidence in the robustness of the 2021-22 budgets they have just voted through. Most expect to make more cuts – not least because the government has failed to fully compensate them for Covid spending – and to endure more years of financial uncertainty.

The NAO urges the government to draw up a long-term plan for councils to help them recover from the “financial scarring” caused by the pandemic. Until it does so, local authorities – and the services they provide – face more years of uncertainty and agonising cuts decisions.

Residents face years more swingeing cuts to local services, from social care to libraries, bin collections and bus routes, as at least 25 councils teeter on the brink of bankruptcy, the public spending watchdog has warned.

Patrick Butler www.theguardian.com 

According to the National Audit Office, the vast majority of English councils (94%) expect to cut spending next year to meet legal duties to balance their budgets. The “scarring” of council balance sheets since the coronavirus pandemic began has been so fierce that half of town halls do not expect their finances to recover until at least the middle of the decade.

The watchdog said a decade of austerity for local government, which has reduced councils’ spending power by a third at a time when demand for services has soared, had left local authorities more vulnerable to the impact of the pandemic than they otherwise would have been.

Social care services for older and disabled adults are likely to be in line for cuts from April, along with special educational needs and homelessness spending, the NAO reported. Libraries, theatres and community centres face closure, bins would be collected less frequently, and subsidies propping up bus routes will shrink.

The warning of continued cuts to local services came as many councils prepare to increase council tax bills by up to 5% from April, and despite claims from ministers that austerity is over. The NAO urged ministers to draw up a programme to stabilise councils’ battered finances in the long term.

“Authorities’ finances have been scarred and won’t simply bounce back quickly,” said Gareth Davies, the head of the NAO. “Government needs a plan to help the sector recover from the pandemic and also to address the longstanding need for financial reform in the sector.”

The chair of the Commons public accounts committee, Meg Hillier MP, warned that local councils were “not out of the woods” despite billions of pounds in emergency funding in recent months.

She said: “Central government support has provided an important lifeline to keep local authorities’ heads above water. But the last year has taken its toll. Local authorities were already over-stretched and now, with reserves depleted, many will have to slash service budgets to balance their books.”

Councils have spent an estimated extra £6.9bn this financial year on Covid-related services, said the NAO. Authorities have seen costs rise as a result of social distancing and the need for personal protective equipment, especially in adult social care, while taking on extra responsibilities to house rough sleepers, support those shielding at home and help with testing, tracing and control of outbreaks.

In addition, they incurred £2.9bn losses from unpaid council tax and business rates, while lockdowns led to income losses of £695m from car parking fees, and £554m from leisure centres, theatres and museums.

Ministers have provided £9.1bn in emergency help but the resulting £600m funding gap has left a third of councils with significant holes in their budgets. This has led to authorities accusing ministers of breaking promises made early in the pandemic to “do whatever is necessary” to support councils.

The NAO said that while the government’s extra Covid funding had “averted system-wide financial failure”, the financial position of councils remained a concern, with many using increasingly depleted reserves and service cuts to shore up budgets. “The outlook for next year is uncertain,” the NAO concluded.

Just one council – Croydon – declared itself insolvent in the past year, but five others – Wirral, Luton, Eastbourne, Bexley and Peterborough – have between them sought and received £109m in government bailout loans to keep them afloat. Ministers approved a £120m emergency loan to Croydon this week.

Both Slough and Nottingham have sought £10m and £30m respectively in bailout cash from the government, and are awaiting decisions. However, the government has refused to say how many other councils have approached it for emergency loans to avoid section 114 insolvency notices.

James Jamieson, chairman of the Local Government Association, said: “We continue to call on government to meet – in full – all cost pressures and income losses incurred by councils as a result of the pandemic. Public finances are undoubtedly under huge strain but investment in our local services will be vital for our national economic and social recovery.”

Steve Reed MP, Labour’s shadow communities and local government secretary, said: “The Conservatives cut council funding by 60% over the past decade so town halls were already on the brink of financial disaster even before the pandemic. Now the government is forcing local authorities to hike up council tax so hard-pressed families are left to pay the price of the Conservatives’ broken promises.”

A spokesperson for the Ministry for Housing, Communities and Local Government said: “As the NAO acknowledges, the government acted swiftly and flexibly to ensure councils continued to deliver vital services throughout the pandemic. Councils continue to play a critical role and we have committed over £35bn to help them support communities and local businesses during this time.”

Small scale developments infilling current towns and villages, more home working, support for entrepreneurs and jobs in town centres are among residents’ top priorities.

This is according to the latest answers in a consultation on the New Local Plan, which finishes on Monday (March 15).

[Below this article Owl posts a summary list of the questions and link to the EDDC web site. Closing date for submissions is 15 March (Monday). This Council is listening to you, don’t waste the opportunity to have your say. Remember that two thirds of the District lie in two AONBs which severely constrains where new development can take place.]

Daniel Wilkins, Exmouth Journal

East Devon District Council (EDDC) is urgently appealing to residents to share their views on new developments and where they think new jobs should be located and whit those jobs should be.

So far, hundreds of people have had their say In the consultation although there have been few comments from young people.

The Council is keen to hear from all groups in the community as the new Local Plan will affect everyone who lives, works and plays in the district.

This week the authority has revealed a number of randomly selected suggestions from residents who have shared their views on jobs and homes.

When asked about sties for housing developments: 25 per cent favoured one in 10 houses being built on small sites.

A further 16 per cent of respondents thought up to a quarter of new houses should be built on small sites and 29 per cent favoured options of more than a quarter of new houses being on small sites.

So far residents have said that it is important not to swamp smatter communities, especially without providing the necessary infrastructure

Other suggestions included building on small sites near towns and villages on unsightly unused brownfield sites – In the hope it would be better for town centre regeneration, with less car use. When asked where developments should go the majority of people favoured infilling in towns and larger villages over building new communities.

As part of the consultation residents have been asked how many new homes East Devon should plan for.

Overall, 29 per cent of respondents favoured an annual average of 922 this is a Government ‘minimum’ level. A total of 31 per cent favoured higher levels of growth. Residents also suggested that affordable housing should be ring-fenced for local families and not be allowed as second homes and there should be a levy/tax on existing second homes and holiday lets so the demand for these is reduced.

When it comes to jobs, residents have also been asked their thoughts on where they think future jobs should be located. The highest-ranking answer was for ‘more home working’. In order, thereafter, were ‘more jobs in towns’, jobs ‘close to Exeter – excluding the West End’ more jobs ‘at the West End’ and at the bottom of the list was jobs in ‘villages and countryside’.

Another hot topic of discussion has been the support for differing job sectors. The highest-ranking answer was for ‘more local entrepreneurs’.

In order, thereafter, were more jobs in traditional sectors, more high-tech jobs and lowest of the options was attracting inward Investment by large firms.

Among the views shared by residents were that employment creation across the whole of East Devon was important but different areas have different needs so schemes needed to be planned for sensitively.

Other views included support for home working now Cov id-19 had shown it was possible for a large proportion of people to do so and should be actively encouraged. Residents said that home working encouraged local community development as people see each other when going for their daily walk.

Cllr Dan Ledger the EDDC Portfolio Holder for Strategic Planning said: “The current Issues and options consultation asks how EDDC should look to achieve this. Through your feedback. we will try to gain a consensus on how the district wish to see employment development come forward, where job creation should be focussed and how we should perceive the future working enviromnents for all of our residents.”

The Questions – Have your say

You do not have to answer all the questions but this summary list is intended to get you started.

(Some questions that allow more detailed comment on a previous topic have been omitted from this list)

Have your say in the New Local Plan consultation here: www.eastdevon.gov.uk/newlocalplan

Q 1 Are the objectives right

Q 3 How to make best use of Neighbourhood Plans

Q 4 Planning for Health and Wellbeing

Q 5, 6 & 7 Climate emergency and related topics

Q 8 How many new homes each year

Q 9 Sites for small scale developments

Q 10 Planning for all stages of life

Q 12 Where to create jobs

Q 13 What emphasis on which job sectors

Q 15 What policies for future Town centre use

Q 17 How important to design beautiful spaces and buildings

Q 19 Importance of conserving and enhancing Heritage Assets

Q 20 Development in protected landscapes

Q 21 Gaining biodiversity

Q 23 Promoting access to walking and cycling facilities

Q 25 Score the importance of facilities from post offices to pubs, places of worship, and bus services

Q 27 Should we retain and refine the existing settlement hierarchy

Q 28 How to distribute new housing development

Q 29 Future options on the type and location of development

Q 30 Should we create a Development Corporation

Q 31 Should we start planning beyond 2040

Q 32 Have we missed anything