This is an interesting insight from Martin Shaw’s blog into the way our local democracy functions under the first past the post system. It shows how blind adherence to “old” national political allegiances and campaigning policies produces unintended, and counterproductive, consequences.

How Labour and the Lib Dems helped the Conservatives prevail in Seaton & Colyton, and across East Devon

seatonmatters.org

After the sorrow comes the anger. In Thursday’s Seaton & Colyton election, I lost by 145 votes. Labour polled 306 and the Lib Dems 160. If either, and certainly if both, had stood down I could well have beaten the Conservative, Marcus Hartnell. I needed only one-third of their combined vote to prevail.

Both parties knew the seat was highly marginal. Both assured me privately they hoped I won. Both had ‘paper’ candidates. They did not campaign. Both knew, however, that with their candidates on the ballot, some voters would back them and inevitably take votes away from me.

However both parties thought that the opportunity to get a miserable share of the vote – by any measure, both 5.9 per cent and 3.1 per cent of the electorate are pathetic performances – was more important than getting a progressive, anti-Conservative councillor elected, someone they knew – based on my track record over the last 4 years – would vote with their parties most of the time.

Elsewhere in East Devon

Exactly the same thing happened in Axminster, where Independent EDA candidate Paul Hayward would also have won if half the Labour vote, or one-third the combined Labour/Lib Dem vote, had gone to him.

In Sidmouth, the Lib Dems were more enlightened, and did not stand against the Independent EDA candidate Louise MacAllister. Yet the Labour vote alone, 209, was still more than Stuart Hughes’ 170 majority. The opportunity to remove a Conservative cabinet member was lost.

It was not only Independent EDA candidates who lost the chance to beat the Conservatives. In the two-seat Exmouth division, where the two Conservatives got 7412 votes between them, the five opposition candidates shared 8164. It does not take much imagination to see that if there had been two, instead of five, there would have been a chance of edging out one or both of the Tories.

In Exmouth, the Independents (EDA did not stand), Lib Dems and Greens did at least recognise the situation by fielding only one candidate each, even if they failed to agree a common two candidates. Labour ploughed on regardless, and was rewarded with its two candidates coming in well behind the Independent and Lib Dem.

Labour’s moronic and arrogant approach

Labour’s approach is the worst of all these parties. Despite never having won either a district or county seat in East Devon, it continues with a ‘strategy’ – if you can call it that – of standing in every seat, regardless of how it benefits the Conservatives.

In this election, this resulted in miserable failure almost everywhere. The local party says that the national party forces them to stand – but if they didn’t submit their nomination papers, these sabotage, no-hope candidates would not exist. Still, local party officers carry on persuading 18-year-olds to put up in order to ‘get experience’, knowing it may hand seats to the Tories.

The exception to this story was Feniton & Honiton. There, because Independents and Greens did not stand, Labour got an unusually good 1491 votes, against the Tories’ 2094. If the Lib Dems hadn’t stood, they might have got closer. Surely there is a lesson here for the party – target one or two seats where you can reasonably hope to do well, and stop playing the Tories’ game everywhere else?

The Greens had a better strategy

In contrast, the Greens came near to such a strategy, deciding not to challenge myself, Paul Hayward and Louise MacAllister since we were poised to win in our finely balanced divisions. They clearly concentrated their resources on Broadclyst, and it seems only right that have been rewarded with their first seat in East Devon, where Henry Gent topped the poll and took a seat from the Tories. Congratulations!

The sorry tale of the Lib Dems – and an inside story of my Seaton & Colyton defeat

I have left the Lib Dems until last. This is in a way the saddest story. Unlike Labour, they acknowledge the need for cooperation. At EDDC, they are working well with the East Devon Alliance, Greens and progressive Independents to provide a historic first non-Conservative administration. In the case of Sidmouth, they did recognise that it was logical to help the Independent EDA challenger to Stuart Hughes, by not standing a candidate.

However in Seaton & Colyton, and Axminster, a different Lib Dem constituency party (Tiverton & Honiton) persevered with no-hope candidates. I can now reveal that this was despite the fact that the original Lib Dem candidate for Seaton contacted me to offer a deal where she would stand down in return for a joint public statement. This was not her private initiative – it followed discussions in the constituency party and she said that John Timperley, their 2019 General Election candidate, would contact me to discuss the detail.

She may have jumped the gun, because I never heard from Timperley, the party in its wisdom decided not to proceed, and a new candidate, Martyn Wilson, ended up on the ballot paper. I met him when he was leafleting. He too said he hoped I would win. I don’t know if his 160 votes, by themselves, would have been enough to tip the balance to me. But a Lib Dem withdrawal and a joint declaration might have had an effect larger than the numbers, benefiting both sides.

This cannot be allowed to happen again

Labour, the Lib Dems, Greens and the East Devon Alliance have a common interest in ensuring that complacent Conservative domination of East Devon, and Devon as a whole, comes to an end. This election was a historic opportunity to make real steps towards this. If Tories had been deprived of Seaton, Axminster, Sidmouth and even one of the Exmouth seats, along with Otter Valley, won by an Independent, and one in Broadclyst, 6 out of 12 East Devon county seats would have been in opposition hands.

Instead, as it was in 2017, it is 10-2 for the Tories. This does not reflect the way people voted. 29564 votes were cast for the combined opposition, compared to only 22265 for the Conservatives. We could have had results which more or less reflected that situation. Instead we are all grossly underrepresented.

Making first-past-the-post work for the opposition

Many of us recognise that the electoral system is flawed. But it is what we have, and we won’t get change until we remove the Tory government using the existing system. In the United States, where they also have the 18th-century system, the progressive forces – from socialists to greens and centrist liberals – unite in a single party. They have got rid of Trump. They have a progressive reforming administration both at federal and many state and local levels.

We’re not looking at a single party. There are strengths in each of the party traditions as well as in the Independent approach. But we MUST, each of us, look at the contribution we can make to a united electoral alternative in Devon.

I am proud that in this election, the EDA only supported Independent candidates in the 3 divisions where we were close last time, and knew we could win. We could have stood paper candidates elsewhere to boost our brand, but resisted the temptation, knowing it would only harm the national parties where they had better chances of winning. Next time round, this must be our common approach. Or Tory rule could continue more or less indefinitely … .

New analysis by CPRE has found that local authorities are increasingly planning major developments in AONBs, largely consisting of executive-style housing – with only 16% classed as affordable. We’ve found government pressure to increase housing numbers is forcing local authorities to prioritise new building over landscape protection.

www.cpre.org.uk 

In calling for special controls over development in areas of ‘special beauty’, CPRE’s founding manifesto of 1926 marked the origins of our campaign for protected landscapes.

By 1949, we’d helped bring about the National Parks Act – which also allowed for the creation of Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONBs) to safeguard landscapes deemed not wild or large enough for National Park status, but considered equally beautiful. Beginning with the designation of the Quantocks AONB in 1956, 34 AONBs (covering 15% of England) have put natural beauty within 30 minutes of two-thirds of the population.

Worrying trends

Thanks to previous CPRE lobbying, government planning guidance recommends that ‘major development’ on AONB land should only happen under exceptional circumstances, and only when it can be demonstrated that it is in the public interest. But our new research has found that local authorities are increasingly allowing development in AONBs.

Government pressure to increase housing numbers is completely undermining AONBs’ legal purpose to ‘conserve and enhance natural beauty’. Every year since 2017/2018, we’ve seen an average of 1,670 housing units approved in AONBs – representing an annual loss of 119 hectares of supposedly protected landscape.

‘Government pressure to increase housing numbers is forcing local authorities to prioritise new building over landscape protection’

While these housing numbers constitute a 27% increase on the previous five year period (from 2012-17), the amount of countryside they are being built on has more than doubled (up by 129%), indicating an increasingly wasteful use of land. In fact, our research found that greenfield developments in AONBs are using up twice as much land as the national average in providing just 16 dwellings per hectare.

Despite their inherent unsustainability, we found that 80% of planning applications on greenfield AONB land are given permission, flying in the face of planning guidelines. This success rate is encouraging further speculative applications: 967 were submitted in the first five months of 2020/21, putting it on course for the highest annual total since 2017/18.

High housing pressure is also having a major impact on the landscape ‘setting’ of AONBs, with 27,857 housing units approved for building within 500 metres of their boundaries in the past five years – an increase of 135% on 2012-17.

Targeting the south

We identified a particularly intense pressure on these landscapes in the south east and south west of England, which are accommodating 85% of the national total of homes planned for AONBs.

The Dorset and Chilterns AONBs – both recommended for National Park status by the government’s independent Glover Review of landscapes – have both seen 771 housing units on greenfield land approved since 2017. Meanwhile, the Cotswolds AONB (also recommended for National Park status) saw a tripling in new housing.

The Glover Review’s recommendations, published at the end of 2019, endorsed CPRE’s longstanding calls for AONBs to be given a stronger voice in planning decisions, noting the ‘particular development pressure’ on the High Weald and the Kent Downs AONBs. Indeed, our research found that the High Weald has seen 932 homes approved on greenfield sites since 2017, while the Kent Downs has experienced a ten-fold increase in development.

Planning for people and nature

Commenting on the findings, CPRE chief executive Crispin Truman has said that ‘the fact that some of our most highly prized areas of countryside are being lost to build more executive homes says a great deal about our planning system.’ That is why we are calling on the government to use the upcoming Planning Bill to strengthen protections for AONBs and ensure that any development meets the needs of local people.

This should include clear guidance that AONBs’ role in conserving and enhancing natural beauty must take priority over housing targets. Furthermore, planning policy must also ensure that development is not permitted in the setting of an AONB if it would have an adverse impact on the experience and appreciation of the landscape within.

‘We’d like to see policies that encourage the smaller, community-led schemes that are much more likely to provide affordable and social homes for local people.’

But while giving local authorities the power to reject inappropriate developments, we’d also like to see policies that encourage the smaller, community-led schemes that are much more likely to provide affordable and social homes for local people.  And because the people who manage these landscapes are best placed to advise on their future, we want to see AONB partnerships fully consulted on any major developments that affect them, with their advice given the utmost consideration in decision-making.

Empty promises?

Last November, the government’s ‘Ten point plan for a green industrial revolution’ argued that ‘the natural environment is one of the most important and effective solutions’ for capturing and storing carbon – an argument that underpinned their pledge to ‘protect and improve’ AONBs and National Parks ‘for future generations’.

These are noble aims, strongly supported by CPRE, and yet they are currently undermined by the government’s own policies. Our national legacy of natural beauty – created and cared for over centuries – is in grave risk of being left in a diminished and degraded state for our grandchildren.

Protecting and enhancing our Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty should be a cornerstone of this generations’ efforts to leave the natural environment in a better state than we found it. With meaningful protections and a truly democratic planning system, CPRE believe it should be possible to deliver the homes we need in sustainable locations, while allowing our finest landscapes to continue providing incredible benefits for people, wildlife and the planet.

Find out more about our campaign for better planning and read our full AONB report.

Clavell Tower in the Dorset AONB – one of many currently under threat from major housing developments dianajarvisphotography.co.uk / Alamy