The owner of Devon restaurant chain Rockfish has revealed plans for yet another seaside venue, while two other sites remain in limbo. The latest plans are to transform a family-run beachfront café into another branch of the seafood restaurant.

Mary Stenson www.devonlive.com 

Mitch Tonks, CEO of Rockfish, submitted plans to revamp the Longboat Café on Budleigh Salterton seafront to East Devon District Council (EDDC) last month. The proposals are for an extension to the existing building, which will be an external dining space with a retractable roof and windows.

The application also says that there are hopes of replacing the shelter next door which has been subject to a planning wrangle between EDDC and the Longboat Café. On its Facebook page, the owners of the Longboat Café say it was built during the pandemic to help the business survive during social-distancing measures, as part of then-temporary measures which allowed moveable structures to be erected next to cafes, pubs and restaurants without planning permission. In 2021, the government made these measures permanent.

The owners of the business say they considered the structure to be moveable as it had been built on wheels but EDDC considered it permanent as it had been secured to the ground to prevent it from being blown out to sea. There is currently an enforcement notice from EDDC in place on the shelter for “unauthorised work”.

In the planning application by Rockfish, it says: “This application seeks to gain planning consent for this thoughtful design proposal which aims to offer a delightful and flexible seafront experience, blending effortlessly with the existing buildings.

“This planning application presents an opportunity to replace the current shelter (which has an enforcement notice) with a much more sensible and appropriate solution.”

Rockfish has eight restaurants across Devon and Dorset, all of which are in coastal or riverside locations. On its website, the chain has three new venues which are set to “open soon” in Salcombe, Sidmouth and Topsham.

Last month, it was confirmed that the Salcombe branch was gearing up to open in time for the summer season, with refurbishment having already started on the premises on Island Street. Meanwhile, opening dates are yet to be announced for the other two sites.

Rockfish purchased the former L’Estuaire Bistro and Bar site on Topsham Quay in June 2022 and has been displaying signs in the doors for many months. With no work appearing to have taken place since, Rockfish said in January that the project had only just entered the design and planning stages.

Plans to transform Drill Hall on Sidmouth seafront into a Rockfish restaurant were recommended for approval in November 2023 but the project was set back by concerns over flood risks. EDDC said it had withdrawn the application but, along with Rockfish, remained committed to redeveloping the site.

The full application for the Longboat Café can be viewed on EDDC’s website here.

Harsh weather conditions mean it’s taken just 10 months for more potholes to be recorded across Devon’s roads than the whole of the last financial year.

Nothing to do with Tory austerity? – Owl

Bradley Gerrard, local democracy reporter www.radioexe.co.uk 

A total of 40,250 potholes were recorded across the county council area between April last year and the end of January this year.  For the 12 months to March 2023, there were 39,813 such hazards.

And February’s data showed another 4,010, pushing the current financial year’s total higher still with figures for March still yet to be confirmed.

Devon County Council, which is responsible for the county’s roughly 8,000 miles of roads, said the “early and harsh freeze/thaw cycles” experienced during the 2022/23 winter continued to cause problems into the summer.

“In addition to the winter weather, there has been an unprecedented number of storm events experienced so far this autumn and winter,” said Meg Booth, director of climate change, environment and transport.

She claims the council is speeding up ‘reactive patching’ and, together with managing their contractors’ workloads, that means it “is managing to contain the overall number of pothole defects across the network awaiting repair.”

The work had been helped by £1.5 million of funding from central government. Ms Booth says the council hopes to use a new system it has trialled for repairing potholes more widely.

“In the summer/autumn of 2023, the service conducted a comprehensive trial of a road surface repair system called Elastomac, which was demonstrated to councillors in May last year,” Ms Booth said.

“The system uses a flowable mastic asphalt which incorporates up to 70-80 per cent recycled materials and can be installed much more quickly than traditional patching techniques and with less disruption to the travelling public.

“This new solution will be added to the wider toolkit again from the spring through to autumn this year.”

The so-called Dragon Patchers, which are repair trucks with a blowtorch-type attachment stretching from the bumper, have been out on more than 500 shifts so far this financial year.
 

Councils have called for an independent review of Boris Johnson’s levelling up policy, as local authorities count the cost of years of hype, disappointment, bureaucratic delay and “begging bowl” culture.

Patrick Butler www.theguardian.com 

Levelling up was launched by Johnson after the Conservatives won the 2019 general election, as he promised to boost left-behind parts of the UK by committing billions to regenerate town centres, upgrade local transport and invest in cultural assets.

Four years and several funding rounds later, many local politicians are angry and frustrated over their experiences with a complex, demanding, seemingly random bidding system for numerous pots of levelling up funds that have ultimately so far led to little change.

Even more baffling to many is the evolution of a policy that seemingly sought initially to prioritise deprived post-industrial cities of the north and Midlands in the name of reducing regional inequality, but now embraces such relatively affluent places as Cambridge, Buckinghamshire and Canary Wharf in London’s docklands.

“One of our bids was for a housing site in the most deprived part of County Durham – top 10 most deprived areas in the country. How can that not be eligible for levelling up but a historic castle renovation in Kent can? What’s levelling up about that?” said Amanda Hopgood, the Liberal Democrat leader of Durham county council.

Confusingly, three of the top 20 most deprived council areas in England – Middlesbrough, Hastings and Rochdale – were awarded no cash over three rounds of the actual levelling up fund, although they did get cash from different pots under the wider collection of levelling up funds, including the towns fund and the shared prosperity fund (there are now an estimated 36 pots in total.)

The funds have different eligibility, application and reporting requirements, with each bid typically costing councils between £30,000 and £60,000, according to parliament’s spending watchdog. Some councils say they have heeded official feedback on failed bids and invested heavily in the next bid, only to be knocked back again “having done everything they asked”.

Gedling borough council in Nottinghamshire learned in November it had yet again failed with a levelling up fund bid (three neighbouring councils had by that stage been awarded tens of millions between them). It furiously accused the government of “moving the goalposts and leaving councils like us with absolutely nothing, time and time again”.

This month, after years of trying, it finally succeeded – getting £20m from the long-term plan for towns fund. “The begging bowl culture created by this government when it comes to allocating funding to local towns, means this funding has come years later than it should have done,” said Michael Payne, the deputy leader of Gedling borough council.

Hopgood called for an independent review of the government’s “dreadful” handling of a bids process that led to councils wasting scarce resources of time and money. County Durham estimates it spent £1.2m on five bids that were unsuccessful after the government changed the rules on eligibility after they had been submitted.

“The frustration is – you spend your time bidding. You haven’t actually got the money to do the bidding or the resources. The successful bids seem arbitrary. You can’t be certain the outcome related to the quality of the bid. You start to believe its been tweaked politically,” said Graham Chapman, a Nottingham City Labour councillor and vice-chair of the Special Interest Group Of Municipal Authorities.

One council chief executive in the south of England lamented the stop-start short-termism of levelling up, made worse by huge council budget cuts. He pointed to the success of a municipal arts centre planned and built locally under an old-style regeneration scheme before austerity took hold. “We would never build that today because there isn’t the resource, the certainty or the capacity to do it.”

Chapman criticises levelling up’s lack of ambition and focus on physical infrastructure at the expense of tackling skills shortages: “It was the only game in town, but it was naive, totally superficial and underfunded. You don’t turn anything around with a few bob over a few years. You can’t just tart up the town centre and think you are levelling up,” he said.

The government insists it is regenerating town centres, creating new infrastructure and helping to level up communities. This months’s public accounts committee report is less optimistic, highlighting huge project delays – just 10% of funds allocated have been spent. The Labour party has compared levelling up to the “burnt out shell” of an abandoned car.

Prof Graeme Atherton of the Centre for Inequality and Levelling Up said despite widespread criticisms, a case can be made for the policy having worked on its own narrow terms, achieving a Johnsonian “cake and eat it” trick of reaching some target places while managing to keep other places relatively happy. “Whether levelling up is successful or appropriate is another set of questions,” he added.

A Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities spokesperson said: “We reject these claims and are proud of our record of funding historically overlooked areas. We have committed over £15bn of levelling up funds to regenerate town centres, create new infrastructure and improve everyday life for people.”