The photographs/videos on the Devon Live website do seem to show very dark-coloured material in the dredger that is licensed to dump it at Sprey Point:
https://www.devonlive.com/news/devon-news/fight-continues-stop-catastrophic-effect-1269626
The Marina is owned by F C Carter & Co, who also own the Greendale Business Centre.
“The National Audit Office has issued a report questioning the Department for Education’s ability to continue converting large numbers of maintained schools to academies.
The watchdog said that the DfE was “taking longer than intended to convert a sizeable proportion of the underperforming schools it believes will benefit most from academy status”.
At January 2018 the Department had converted 6,996 maintained schools to academies. The process has cost it an estimated £745m since 2010-11, of which £81m was spent in 2016-17.
The NAO report – Converting maintained schools to academies – highlighted how a much higher proportion of secondary schools than primary schools were academies. Some 72% of secondary schools, including free schools, were academies compared with 27% of primary schools.
“This leaves local authorities with responsibility for most primary schools and specialist providers, but few secondary schools. In areas where a high proportion of secondary schools are academies, it is more difficult for local authorities to take an integrated, whole-system approach to the education of children in their area,” the NAO warned.
The watchdog also found significant geographical variation in the proportion of schools that were now academies. This varied across England, from 93% in Bromley to 6% in Lancashire, Lewisham and North Tyneside. There were 23 local authorities (15%) that had 150 or more maintained schools, while 55 local authorities (37%) had fewer than 50 maintained schools, it said.
The report also found that:
Almost two-thirds of schools rated as inadequate by Ofsted and directed to convert, with the support of a sponsor, took longer than the nine months the DfE says it should take to open as academies. The NAO estimated that, at January 2018, there were 37,000 children in maintained schools that Ofsted had rated as inadequate more than nine months before but that had not yet opened as academies.
The Department had found it difficult to find sponsors for some of the most challenged schools. “In particular, small, sometimes remote, primary schools can find it challenging to attract local sponsors and integrate into multi-academy trusts.” There were 242 sponsored academies that were more than 50 miles from their sponsor. …”
With permission now granted for Dorset to move from nine regional authorities to two unitaries, politicians across Dorset are hailing it as the way forward to cope with continued austerity and income losses.
Which begs the question: if unitisation is so good, why are we stuck with a myriad of district and city councils in Devon?
Is Dorset right or wrong? Should we be following their lead? Are we following their lead in secret?
Or is our Local Enterprise Partnership Joint Committee our de-facto unelected, unaccountable, unscrutinised unitary authority already – with heavily-weighted Somerset taking the majority of its funds?
http://www.midweekherald.co.uk/news/go-ahead-for-two-unitary-councils-for-dorset-1-5410515
“The vetting process by which Toby Young was appointed to the board of the new higher education regulator was flawed and rife with political interference, according to the results of an investigation by an official watchdog.
The commissioner for public appointments’ report castigates the Department for Education (DfE) and regulator the Office for Students (OfS) for failing to delve into Young’s controversial writings and social media postings, and uncovers a high degree of direct meddling by ministers and No 10 Downing Street.
The commissioner concludes that the OfS’s board appointments, including Young, showed a “clear disparity” in the treatment of different candidates, and that parts of the process “had serious shortcomings in terms of the fairness and transparency aspects” under the code governing public appointments.
The report reveals Jo Johnson, who was then the universities minister, contacted Young about applying for the post and that his nomination was later queried by Justine Greening, the education secretary at the time.
The commissioner also detailed the involvement of Downing Street special advisers in blocking nominees for the “student experience” role on the OfS board, who were blacklisted because of previous involvement with student unions and their expressed opposition to the government’s Prevent counter-extremism programme.
“The evidence presented to the commissioner indicates that the decision on whether or not to appoint one candidate in particular was heavily influenced, not by the panel but by special advisers, notably from 10 Downing Street,” the report concluded.
Emails and memos “show that there had been a desire amongst ministers and special advisers not to appoint someone with close links to student unions, such as the National Union of Students”.
Young’s appointment was announced by the DfE at midnight on New Year’s Eve, when the powerful new higher education regulator was formally launched.
Young’s inclusion on the board immediately attracted sustained public controversy, with critics highlighting Young’s Twitter account, containing salacious and crude comments about women, and Young’s writing in support of what he dubbed “progressive eugenics”. Eight days later Young announced he would withdraw.
The commissioner found that while the DfE said it conducted online vetting of the candidates, “by its own admission, it did not delve back extensively into social media so it was not aware of the tweets by Mr Young”. The report adds: “However, the social media activity of the initially preferred candidate for the student experience role was extensively examined.”
The commissioner also revealed that departmental emails referred to “No 10 Googlers” in highlighting social media comments by the student candidates. “Notably, no such exploration or research was made on other possible appointees, including Mr Young,” the report states.
“Mr Young’s reputation as a controversialist, in itself hardly a secret, should have prompted further probing to examine whether what he had said and done might conflict with his public responsibilities and standards expected on the OfS board.
“Second, the rapid disclosure of what were described as offensive tweets in the days after his appointment suggests that it was not that hard to find them, that not much delving was required,” the report added.
The OfS and its chair, Sir Michael Barber, also came in for criticism for their part in the proceedings. Barber sat on the appointments panel, alongside two DfE officials. “Regrettably, and contrary to best practice, the panel for the generic non-executive roles was all male,” the commissioner noted.
The report also details the DfE’s repeated efforts to minimise or delay requests for information about the appointment process from the commissioner’s office.
Peter Riddell, the commissioner for public appointments , said: “My investigation uncovered a number of areas where important principles in the governance code were breached or compromised in the appointments to the board of the Office for Students.
“In my experience, this episode is unrepresentative of the hundreds of public appointments that take place each year, but it is important that lessons are learned – not least so that talented people from a wide range of backgrounds are willing to put themselves forward to serve on the boards of public bodies.”
Guardian letters today. We also have this “premium service” – our prices go from £150 (inc VAT) to £900:
Click to access pre-app-charging-schedule-jan-2017.pdf
The letter:
“Further to Simon Jenkins’ article (Wine and dine democracy is now on trial – and about time, 23 February), there is another facet of this situation. Milton Keynes council now offers its residents and prospective developers the possibility of a premium planning service. If we wish to ease the planning and development process we can peruse the biographies of its planning staff on the council website and pick a suitable one. Prices on the site range from £150 to £7,500 plus VAT. The council is “dedicated to building relationships with our customers and therefore have found that some Applicants and Agents like to have the continuity of working with specific Planning Officers”.
This may work very well in some cases by improving planning efficiency, but where is the oversight if Milton Keynes residents find that neighbourhood plans are ignored? The ethos of our initially well-planned town is disappearing while developers who ignore the unique character of the place are helped to get planning permission by a planning authority that has enjoyed a close, paid-for relationship with them.
No doubt the planners show impeccable integrity but, if there is insufficient oversight, the temptations must be there.
Gill Boothy
Milton Keynes, Buckinghamshire”
“Theresa May will hand out the £1bn in her “cash for votes” deal with the Democratic Unionist Party without MPs’ prior approval, The Independent can reveal, putting the Government at risk of legal action.
The Commons will only vote after slices of the funds have been allocated to Northern Ireland, and will be denied a single vote on the overall £1bn – despite the Government conceding last year that Parliament’s “authorisation” is needed.
The decision has been condemned for leaving MPs “cut out of approving the deal”, which gives Northern Ireland a huge spending boost in return for Ms May being propped up in power.” …
Good luck with that doubling of productivity, Local Enterprise Partnership! (see post below)
“The South West could be hit harder than other parts of England when the UK leaves the EU, according to panel members at a one-off Brexit discussion convened by CIPFA in Bristol.
High numbers of EU workers could be lost from industries in the region, which must get better at ‘fighting its own corner’, attendees at the event on Friday last week heard.
Kate Kennally, chief executive of Cornwall Council, pointed out the South West had a growing number of tech start-ups but it was not good at promoting its own industries.
“We have a big part of the UK that doesn’t have a big voice,” she said.
She added Cornwall voted leave because of “a sense of profound insecurities about public services” and that “this could be a moment where there needs to be a good deal of bravery”.
Kennally also pointed out: “Exeter, Bristol, Plymouth are the cities most reliant on exporting to the EU.”
Nigel Costley, regional secretary of the trade union federation the TUC, said: “I don’t think we are well equipped to respond to [Brexit].
“I fear we are going to be the losers in the South West. I do not see us fighting our corner very well. …”
http://www.publicfinance.co.uk/news/2018/02/south-west-could-suffer-more-other-regions-after-brexit
“… The Productivity Strategy aims to double productivity in the area over 20 years, focussing on themes including leadership, housing, connectivity, infrastructure, skills and training. It looks at growth, capitalising on the area’s distinctive assets and maximising the potential of digital technology.
Cllr Fothergill said: “We can do some of this ourselves but some aspects will need the support from Government which is why the Joint Committee is so important. …”
https://www.devonlive.com/news/devon-news/south-west-aims-double-productivity-1265805
Right! So, that’s ok then – the government will achieve something here they can’t achieve anywhere else!!!
“Dredging from a marina in Exmouth is being halted after sands on Teignmouth’s beach turned black at the weekend.
The contamination was a shock to local residents and businesses ahead of the all-important Easter break.
The town has worked hard to drive up bathing water quality standards in recent years but local people were annoyed when the Marine Management Organisation (MMO) granted a licence for the disposal of thousands of tonnes of silt from the marina in Exmouth close to their beach.
The MMO said it was suspending the licence “relating to the dredging of Exmouth Marina and disposal of materials at the Sprey Point site”.
It added: “The suspension will be active immediately once the notice is served on the licence holder.”
Heavy seas have washed away most of the black silt in the meantime.”
17.48 hrs
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/uk-england-devon-43129090
Owl says: The gallery, in Honiton, has swallowed up around £500,000 of our council tax money over the last few years. Could The Beehive (also a gobbler of funds in the past) perhaps house the gallery’s art and activities?
Or, here’s a thought: display it in the new £10 million HQ currently under construction in Honiton!
“Unprecedented increases in council tax starting in April will not offset cuts to services including children’s centres and libraries, local authorities have warned.
The Local Government Association (LGA) said councils in England would raise an estimated £1.1bn through higher council taxes in 2017-18, but this would not cover the £1.4bn lost through cuts to central government funding plus the higher wage bill of £1bn.
Nearly half of English councils with responsibility for providing social care for adults and children will increase council tax by the maximum 5.99% allowed – 2.99% for general council tax plus a further levy of up to 3% to pay for the care of older and disabled adults – but this will not prevent further cuts to services, according to the LGA.
Councils will continue to reduce or close services such as children’s centres, libraries, leisure centres, parks, museums and road repairs to plug growing gaps in adult and children’s social care and homelessness services, it says.
The widespread emergence of what some councillors have dubbed “pay more, get less” budget settlements comes as town halls struggle to balance the books after years of cuts in core government funding.
Northamptonshire county council effectively declared itself bankrupt earlier this month after admitting that rising costs and shrinking income made it unable to set a legal budget.
The council must set out revised plans for cuts at a meeting this week after an auditors report warned that its existing proposed budget plans were “not credibly achievable”.
Northamptonshire’s predicament highlights how councils are increasingly reliant on one-off measures such as dipping into reserves, or selling buildings and land, to meet the spiralling cost of social care. Those pressures are being compounded in some cases by the failure to deliver savings with existing cuts.
The LGA said 147 of the 152 English authorities that provide social care services would levy a 3% council tax precept from April to raise extra cash for the care of older and disabled adults. Although this will raise an extra £548m, it will be wiped out by the cost of meeting the national minimum wage.
These councils face additional costs estimated to be at least £400m over the next 12 months as result of a legal judgement that requires care employers to pay the minimum wage to carers working sleep-in shifts, backdated for six years.
Out of the 152 “social care” authorities, 108 also plan to increase general council tax by between 2.95% and the maximum 2.99% allowed. This will raise an estimated £548m. Five councils have said they will freeze council tax for 2018-19. …
… A spokesman for the Department of Housing, Communities and Local Government said: “As part of our finance settlement, we are delivering a real-terms increase in resources to councils over the next two years, more freedom and fairness, and greater certainty to plan and secure value for money.
“We want to work with local government to develop a new funding system for the future and encourage councils to submit responses to the review currently under way.”
England’s councils have experienced a 40% cut in central government funding since the start of the decade and face a £5bn funding gap by 2020.
The Local Government Information Unit thinktank warned this month that many English local authorities were teetering on the edge of financial crisis.”
“Communities across the country will see many of their local services face further reductions this year despite paying more council tax, the Local Government Association warns today. …
With local government facing an overall funding gap that will exceed £5 billion by 2020, the LGA is warning these council tax rises will not prevent the need for continued cutbacks to all local services this year. Councils will also have to continue to divert ever-dwindling resources from other local services, including filling potholes, maintaining our parks and green spaces and running children’s centres, leisure centres and libraries, to try and plug growing funding gaps in adult social care, children’s services and homelessness support.
The LGA said the Government needs to urgently address the growing funding gaps facing local services and provide the financial sustainability and certainty needed to protect the local services our communities rely on by committing to allow local government as a whole to keep every penny of business rates collected.
LGA Chairman Lord Porter said
“Since 2010, council tax bills have risen by less than inflation and other key household bills. But faced with severe funding pressures, many councils feel they are being left with little choice but to ask residents to pay more to help them try and protect their local services.
“The extra income this year will help offset some of the financial pressures they face but the reality is that many councils are now beyond the point where council tax income can be expected to plug the growing funding gaps they face. Extra social care funding will be wiped out by the significant cost pressures of paying for the Government’s National Living Wage and extra general council tax income will only replace a third of the central government funding they will lose this year.
“This means councils will have to continue to cutback services or stop some altogether to plug funding gaps.
“We have repeatedly warned of the serious consequences of funding pressures facing services caring for the elderly and disabled, protecting children and tackling homelessness for the people that rely on them and the financial sustainability of other services councils provide. It is unfair to shift the burden of tackling a national crisis onto councils and their residents.
“The need for adequate funding for local government is urgent. To maximise the potential of local government and protect local services from further cuts, funding gaps must be properly addressed and local government as a whole must be allowed to keep all of the business rates it collects locally each year to put it on a sustainable footing.”
Long, long ago in a place far away …
A short article in today’s Sunday Times Business section notes that new EU rules now forbid fund managers and analysts from accepting hospitality beyond a minimal level – it has to benefit “ordinary” customers and if over a reasonable limit it is considered “an inducement”. It goes on to say that most firms have set £100-150 a head as the maximum in London.
Fortunately, our local Tory councillors can rest easy as it does not apply to local government, so they can still take their Exeter Chiefs rugby tickets and their meals with developers and the like – which never seem to cost more than £25 a head when declared (where are they going – Nando’s or perhaps Frankie and Benny’s? And DEFINITELY t-total!).
Source: Sunday Times Business supplement (pay wall)
Owl says: While Lawson blames Osborne it should be noted that May and Hammond have not closed the loophole … which could easily be done …
“At first he said he deserved his £110m bonus, and resisted all the pressure to assign a large chunk of it to charity. Then he said he would give some of it to good causes, but not how much (“a private matter”). Finally, on Friday, after three months of hectoring by the media and investors, he said he’d forgo . . . £25m.
I’m referring to Jeff Fairburn, chief executive of the housebuilder Persimmon and the principal beneficiary of a remarkably generous share-based incentive scheme that has sprinkled more than £500m of equity around 140 of the company’s “top individuals” as if from a fairy godmother’s wand. Except it doesn’t come out of thin air, but by diluting all the ordinary shareholders’ stakes in the business.
Their representatives — pension fund managers, principally — have spent those past three months moaning about it. But when the incentive scheme was drawn up in 2012 — linking the rewards to share price performance and dividend payments — it was approved by 85% of shareholders. So Fairburn’s resistance is understandable; and, indeed, Persimmon’s investors have done fine — since 2012 their shares have quadrupled in value.
But the main reason is not the ingenuity of Fairburn and his colleagues. No, if there was a fairy godmother in this, it was George Osborne. As chancellor, he launched the help-to-buy scheme, which economically crazy but politically astute subsidy supports about half of Persimmon’s recent house sales. We as taxpayers are not directly funding those £500m worth of bonuses, but we have underwritten the personal mortgages that made that colossal windfall possible. Don’t mention it, Jeff: happy to help.
The person most annoyed by this is actually a lot richer than Fairburn — and another housebuilding boss. Steve Morgan, the head of Redrow, complained: “For somebody who has not taken a salary for 20 years it sticks in the craw, being called a greedy housebuilder because of that one company.” And why has Mr Morgan not taken a salary for 20 years? Because he founded Redrow in the 1970s and is worth about £830m. He would be a billionaire (according to the compiler of The Sunday Times Rich List) had he not passed £226m of Redrow shares to his charity, the Steve Morgan Foundation, which supports disadvantaged and disabled people in north Wales and northwest England.
Here we see, in instructive proximity, the sort of wealth that compels admiration and the sort that provokes contempt. That stark divergence is not because Morgan has been philanthropic. It is because he has created his own business and, at the outset, would have been at personal risk if it had not worked out (perhaps, like so many entrepreneurs, he had offered whatever he owned as security for bank loans). Fairburn had a good story to tell, too: he began in the building trade as a youth training scheme apprentice, studying to become a quantity surveyor while mixing concrete. But he did not create the firm of which he is, after all, just another employee: he is taking the rewards of entrepreneurialism without the risks.
He is not, in the true sense of the word, a capitalist. But Morgan is. And the point is that while there has in the decade since the credit crunch been a gale blowing the sails of those who denounce “capitalism”, the public hostility is actually — and rightly — directed against those who are not capitalists (as Karl Marx defined them), but who have seized capital from its owners. After all, that is what the discredited banking executives, both here and in America, did. They leveraged the capital of which they were merely managers, to generate vast bonuses for themselves: when that blew up the banks, the exploded corporate balance sheets were rescued by the taxpayer . . . while the executives kept all their winnings.
In his latest book, Skin in the Game (which I review today) Nassim Nicholas Taleb calls this “the Bob Rubin trade”, in (dis)honour of the former US Treasury secretary who kept his $120m compensation from Citibank: “When the bank, literally insolvent, was rescued by the taxpayer, he didn’t write any cheque — he invoked uncertainty as an excuse.”
The risk — to the market system now under attack from the unreconstructed Marxists at the helm of the British Labour Party — is that the bonny baby of entrepreneurial endeavour will be thrown out with the dirty water of executive self-dealing.
Much of that self-dealing — which I first wrote about as long ago as 1989 in a Spectator cover piece titled “How the bosses help themselves” — is promoted by the argument that it makes senior managers behave more like proper owners, rather than mere time-servers. Specifically, the executive compensation committees of FTSE companies have argued that through the awards of share options, the interests of those managers are aligned with the investors who, collectively, own the businesses.
It is a theory generally accepted and, like many such established doctrines, false. The ordinary shareholders have actually paid for their equity, so if things go pear-shaped, they stand to lose what they have invested; and those who have created businesses can lose everything, even their homes. But share options are free. There is an upside, but as no capital is at risk, no real downside.
One result is that share option schemes have encouraged undue risk-taking by executives, for example by borrowing heavily to finance acquisitions — which is what happened at Carillion. It also encourages a more short-term approach to business-building than a true owner would adopt: share option schemes tend to last for a few years, not the decades that a good business should be measured in.
I should confess, at this point, to having been a beneficiary of just such a scheme. When I was an executive of the Telegraph group I was assigned, for the first and only time in my life, some share options . . . and within just a few months they were most unexpectedly realised when the majority shareholder decided to buy out everyone else. Without any effort on my part — other than just continuing to do my job of editing a newspaper — I was suddenly presented with a cheque sufficient to pay off my mortgage.
I was delighted, of course. But it also felt wrong, somehow. I suppose I might feel the same way if I won the national lottery, although that is most unlikely to happen, and not just because of the odds: I don’t enter it. At least the lottery winners have paid for their stake. We should expect our best-remunerated business leaders to have done the same.”
Source: Sunday Times (pay wall)
Who best illustrates trust and respect in East Devon? Claire Wright? Martin Shaw? Cathy Gardner? No, according to our Tory Council it’s (drumroll) – Ian Thomas and Philip Skinner!!! Thomas ousting Paul Diviani as Tory Leader and Skinner as his deputy side-kick!
Oh,oh …. Mr Thomas a somewhat unknown quantity having kept himself firmly under the radar. Skinner, however, has enjoyed some limelight.
Skinner was a member of the maligned East Devon Business Forum, chaired by disgraced ex-councillor Graham Brown. Though his affiliation at the Forum wandered between companies and council…
AND let’s not forget his controversial chairmanship of the Exmouth Regeneration Board which has made him few friends outside the charmed EDDC Tory circle ….
But most of all, who can forget “Christmas Card-Gate” – when then Leader of EDDC, Sarah Randall-Johnson, stripped him of his role of Rural Champion after this debacle:
“CONSERVATIVE councillor has been stripped of his role as rural champion after off-the-cuff remarks in a Christmas card offended the leader of a Devon authority.
Philip Skinner, who represents Talaton, near Ottery St Mary, sent the card to Sara Randall Johnson, leader of East Devon District Council and headed it “My greatest adversary”. Mr Skinner heaped praise on her at the expense of other members, boasting: “The rest I can demolish in my sleep, but you are in a class of your own.”
Mr Skinner signed off with two footnotes, the last of which stated: “If only things had turned out different, we’d have made one hell of a team.”
Unfortunately, we are not told what the first footnote was.”
Here is the announcement of the new Tory duo – oddly from a Dorset online website rather than from East Devon Tory sources:
“UPLYME’S district councillor Ian Thomas has been elected leader of the Conservative group at East Devon District Council.
Councillor Thomas, who lives in Ware, has served as a district councillor for the Trinity ward, which includes Uplyme and Rousdon, since 2009.
He is portfolio holder for finance at East Devon and is a director of the Exeter Science Park Company.
Councillor Thomas was elected new leader of the Conservative group at its annual general meeting this week, taking over from Paul Diviani, who has held the post since 2011.
Councillor Diviani will remain leader of East Devon District Council until its annual meeting on May 16th, when Councillor Thomas will take the reins.
Philip Skinner, portfolio holder for economy, who has represented the Tale Vale since 1999, secured the post of deputy of the Conservative group.
Councillor Skinner is a former chairman of the Tiverton and Honiton Conservative Association.
Commenting on their election, Councillor Thomas said: “It’s a great privilege to take over the leadership of our group from Paul, after his distinguished time at the helm.
“Our focus will continue on ensuring high quality affordable homes, an economy which works for all and delivering the services our residents and businesses value.
“We are uniquely fortunate to work within the framework of a natural environment second to none, supported by a range of leisure facilities and arts and culture events essential to the health, safety, prosperity and happiness of all we represent”.
“Whilst our new team has taken on leadership of the East Devon Conservative Group immediately, Paul will remain in post, as leader of East Devon District Council, until the annual council meeting on May 16.”
“Paul, Philip and I will take advantage of this time to ensure a smooth transfer of responsibilities to our new team, so the complex task of running a busy and ambitious district council continues, without missing a beat.”
Councillor Skinner added: “East Devon needs the energy, ideas and focus of our Conservative group to grow and prosper in challenging times.
“Our job is to continue our excellent performance, to extend the trust of our electorate, and return a larger Conservative majority in the 2019 district council elections so that East Devon continues to prosper for all.”
Councillor Diviani commented: “I’m very pleased to be able to pass the leaders baton of this fantastic council to such a talented and experienced team. the
“Ian and Philip have already demonstrated a strong ability to work together and, through their Conservative principles of trust and respect, to engage their colleagues in setting policy and fighting to get the very best for our wonderful district, to the benefit of our residents, businesses and visitors.”
http://lyme-online.co.uk/news/uplyme/uplyme-district-councillor-elected-conservative-leader/
“The Company is engaged in delivering its ‘buy and build’ expansion strategy, adding to the range of services provided by the Group through working with organisations that share its vision.
Focused on out of hospital healthcare worth in excess of £20bn per year – the NHS is moving non-acute care components out of hospitals and closer to home
Buy and build consolidation strategy fitting with NHS trend towards outsourcing and outcome based commissioning
Targeting attractive companies in the UK health sector that share Totally’s vision for integrated and cohesive out of hospital healthcare
Build and develop a high-quality diversified group through organic and acquisition based growth
Become one of the leading out of hospital healthcare providers in the UK
This strategy is supported by ambitious management who have identified public-market outsourced health services as an attractive prospect and have developed a plan to fully develop this opportunity.”
One presumes that Councillors Diviani and Twiss are aware of this, having declared hospitality from Baker Estates in September and December last year:
https://eastdevonwatch.org/2018/02/22/eddc-councillor-freebies/
PRESS RELEASE
“Developer requests reduced affordable housing provision on residential development at Hayne Lane, Honiton
Local planning authority will consider offer from Baker Estates to provide improved mix of houses at Hayne Lane development plus £0.5m contribution towards off-site affordable housing
East Devon’s Local Planning Authority (LPA) has received a request from Baker Estates to amend the amount of affordable housing that they provide on their development of 300 houses on land to the west of Hayne Lane in Honiton.
The request will be considered after 12 noon at the next meeting of East Devon District Council’s Development Management Committee on 6 March 2018, which is being held at Exmouth Town Hall
East Devon planning officers are recommending that the request be agreed.
As present Baker Estates is required to provide 40% of the dwellings (120 units) as affordable housing in accordance with the original planning permission granted on the site in 2015.
However, the developer is now asking the LPA to agree to reduce the affordable housing provision to 30% or 90 dwellings, whichever is the greater. This change would also affect the amount of financial contribution being secured for off-site open space, which would be reduced from £488,000 to £210,000.
In exchange Baker Estates is offering an improved mix of houses on the site and £500,000 financial contribution towards off-site provision of affordable housing.
The applicants have submitted this request as they believe that current planning policy would support a reduction in the provision of affordable housing down to 25%, if a new planning application were to be submitted. While they are offering less than the 40% affordable housing provision currently secured, they are offering more than the 25% they believe they would be required to provide if a new planning application were submitted.
The planning officers’ report advises that while there is a chance that Baker Estates may not be able to successfully argue 25% affordable housing provision as part of a new planning application, there is an equal chance that such a proposal would be acceptable should an application be submitted and determined on appeal by the Planning Inspectorate.
In addition, the planning officers believe that the viability of the site is such that it is unlikely that the council would be able to secure the current 40% provision into the future, and that agreeing to the request will negate the need for a lengthy and costly planning appeal, enabling the development to proceed as quickly as possible while providing 90, much needed, affordable housing units.
The report can be viewed on the council’s website:
Cllr Mike Howe, Chairman of East Devon’s Development Management Committee, said:
“It is important that this sort of decision is made in the public view, so that everyone can understand the issues at stake. It is about striking a fair balance, while ensuring that the right amount of affordable housing provision is made.”
Owl says: well the cut is just chicken-feed to these people – and what bets on Persimmon improving other packages such as expenses, stock options and pension payments in future?
“Persimmon is reducing bonus payouts to three top executives by £51m, including a £25m cut for its chief executive, after the UK’s second largest housebuilder was strongly criticised over its huge payout plans.
The FTSE 100 firm said a bonus of £100m for its chief executive, Jeff Fairburn, would be cut to £75m under the company’s long-term incentive bonus plan.
Finance director Mike Killoran will receive £24m less than the £78m he was originally due, and managing director Dave Jenkinson will see his bonus cut by £2m to £38m. …”
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/feb/23/persimmon-slashes-bosss-bonus-to-just-75m
The auditors rely on calling Carillion’s dicey contracts “optimistic”!!!
“The £40 million that KPMG and Deloitte were paid as the external and internal auditors of Carillion respectively has been described as a “colossal waste of money” by MPs.
At a testy hearing of the work and pensions and business joint select committee, the reputations of audit partners at the two international accountancy firms were shredded as incredulous MPs wondered why they had not dug deeper when alarm bells seemed to be ringing around the construction contractor.
MPs heard evidence from Michelle Hinchliffe, head of audit at KPMG, Peter Meehan, the KPMG partner who audited Carillion, and Michael Jones, who led Deloitte’s internal audit service at the contractor. KPMG was paid £29 million over 19 years by Carillion, and Deloitte £11 million over an unknown period. Rachel Reeves, co-chairwoman of the committee, said: “These audits appear to be a colossal waste of time and money, fit only to provide false assurance to investors, workers and the public.”
Ms Reeves criticised Mr Meehan and Mr Jones after their respective admissions that Mr Meehan had failed to visit at-risk Carillion projects and Deloitte had missed quarterly meetings with the Carillion board’s audit committee.
“Carillion staff and investors could see the problems at the company but those responsible — auditors, regulators, and, ultimately, the directors — did nothing to stop Carillion being driven off a cliff,” she said.
Mr Meehan told MPs that for the 2014 and 2015 audits he had visited the construction project in Qatar that the former chief executive Richard Howson blamed for Carillion’s collapse. Mr Meehan did not make any subsequent visits despite knowing of the importance of the contract. Carillion claimed that it was left with £200 million of unpaid bills in Qatar. Mr Meehan repeatedly stated that despite Mr Howson’s assertions, the Qatar contract had only become a serious issue in the months after the 2016 accounts were signed off in March last year and leading up to the major profit warning of last July, which laid bare the crisis at Carillion. The auditor conceded that Qatar had been flagged as an “amber warning” at a meeting in the February before the sign-off of those accounts.
On another contract, the £350 million construction of the Royal Liverpool Hospital, Mr Meehan admitted that although he had been on previous fact-finding site visits, he had not returned despite internal revelations of major on-site issues in November 2016. He finally made a visit to the hospital last month, four days before Carillion went bust. He contested claims that Carillion’s accounting had become aggressive but said that he had told Carillion board directors that their accounting on some of the “riskier contracts” had become “optimistic”. His concerns were overruled. Despite this, he said he remained happy to sign off the accounts.
Mr Meehan said he had become aware of the enormity of the issues in Qatar in May last year, at which point “we knew a writedown was coming”.
That writedown and those on Royal Liverpool, the Midland Metropolitan in Birmingham and the £700 million Aberdeen bypass were taken on July 10, at which point Mr Howson was removed from his post. Mr Meehan said a review of contracts at that point found that in previous internal reviews, managers had been more pessimistic about the likely outcome for the contracts than the position that was reported.
The auditor said confusion was such in the Carillion boardroom that on the night before the July profit warning, directors were debating whether the writedown should be £695 million or £845 million.”
Source: The Times (pay wall)
There wasn’t a paragraph in this article that could be edited out – truly we are in The Swamp:
“Each time a US gunman goes berserk, the British media erupts in fury at the money the gun lobby can devote to its lethal interest. To be sure, big time lobbying is the occupational disease of American politics. In the US, it can have murderous consequences. Still, on matters of principle, Britons would do well to watch their hypocrisy.
The sums spent by property companies on lobbying Westminster city council’s planning committee – revealed in Tuesday’s Guardian – may be dwarfed by those spent across the Atlantic. But the hospitality showered on the committee’s chairman for 16 years, the amiable Robert Davis, was breathtaking. Five-hundred freebies, including 10 foreign trips, in just three years. At least 150 of these were from a who’s who list of property industry figures. Even Harvey Weinstein is on the list. Entertaining Davis was clearly a Westminster cottage industry. He can hardly have had time to down one glass of champagne before raising another.
Everywhere money is at stake, those regulating it will be open to temptation
Meanwhile in the planning committee, the London Evening Standard’s Jim Armitage – there as a local resident objecting to a planning application – watched planning approvals get ticked off mechanically. He noted that not a single objection was upheld. Members “looked at the ceiling, buffed their nails and scratched their noses” as each was nodded through.
Westminster council asserted this week that all hospitality was received during “meetings”, and the idea that any of its councillors “could be bought by the property lobby was demonstrably untrue”. The meetings apparently took place at Wimbledon, at a performance of the musical Hamilton, and in the south of France. There is nothing wrong in this, provided gifts and hospitality are declared. But this assumes that what is declared cannot be considered, under the 2010 Bribery Act, a “financial or other advantage” offered or accepted to secure “improper performance”. Transparency is not enough.
Davis’s most extraordinary case was that of the late Irvine Sellar’s 72-storey “Paddington Pole”. This required the demolition of an Edwardian baroque sorting office and the erection of a gigantic tower, within the boundary of a conservation area and towering over Brunel’s Paddington station. Proposed in 2016, it breached every conceivable principle of good planning, but Sellar entertained Davis and apparently secured his approval for the pole Davis later described as a potential masterpiece. Sellar added seven more storeys to his plans. A public outcry led eventually to plans for the pole being withdrawn, but only to be replaced by a proposal for a bigger in volume but lower glass box. This was waved through the planning committee against all local opposition after Davis had publicly hailed it as a “game-changer”.
What is highly questionable is what happened next. Protesters pleaded for a meeting with the council but were ignored. Despite the obvious unsuitability of a vast box in a conservation area, Sadiq Khan, the mayor of London, declined to intervene. That decision was followed by a similar refusal by the planning minister, Sajid Javid, who declined to give his reasons for doing so. This is most unusual for such a controversial project. The Shard, also developed by Sellar, was, in contrast, subject to a lengthy public inquiry. Protesters are trying to take Javid’s refusal to explain why he declined to intervene to the court of appeal.
British planning is a mess. It is awash with political donations and lavish lobbying as the construction industry wrestles to capitalise on the Conservatives’ “let-rip approach” to urban and rural development. Before the 2010 election, the Conservative Property Forum is recorded as donating £500,000 to the party.
The Cameron government duly dropped proposals for local appeals against development from its planning framework document. Lobbyists from the British Property Federation and others were effectively invited to rewrite the framework for themselves. The industry then donated a further million pounds to stave off higher council tax banding in response to Labour’s mansion tax.
This is hardly unique to planning. The NHS is awash in inducements to doctors to prescribe branded medicines. Arms company boards are stuffed with generals. The banks that fund private finance initiatives keep the Whitehall doors revolving. Declarations of interest by members of the House of Lords read like a lobbyists’ congregation. It clearly pays companies to lobby. The irony is that it was David Cameron who made great play of curbing this in his Lobbying Act. It was, he said, “the next big scandal waiting to happen”. Yet the only scandal was how the act was watered down, and how Cameron’s transparency register for lobbyists was lobbied to oblivion.
British lobbying is not as blatant as Washington’s infamous “Gucci Gulch”, where interest groups stuff the pockets of congressional lawmakers. Corruption in Britain is rarely through payments to individuals, and public officials seldom indulge in the log-rolling – legislators trading support for each other’s pet projects – seen in American politics. But the risk of bias and partiality exist in parts of the public sector. Of these, property planning, where huge sums of money can be involved, is the most obvious.
Everywhere money is at stake, those regulating it will be open to temptation. That is why oversight is crucial. But oversight of British local government is currently on a par with a banana republic. The Standards Board for England was abolished in the course of Cameron’s “quango cull” in 2012. It supposedly monitored the ethical performance of officers and councillors in local government. It was criticised as cumbersome, meddlesome and bureaucratically intrusive. Few mourned the board’s passing. Each local council was then expected to make its own arrangements.
The minister at the time said there was a need “for a light touch”. Westminster council took him at his word. It might have been a good idea to see the Standards Board go, but it should have been replaced with something. Even the most ardent localist cannot expect councils to float free of any oversight. Millions of pounds can turn on a planning decision. Anyone who knows these local controversies will attest that many stink to high heaven.
Davis has denied any wrongdoing and nobly referred himself to Westminster’s own “monitoring officer”. It is hard to see how this meets any plausible test of independence. Much now rests on the shoulders of this officer, as it does on the judges reviewing the Sellar glass box decision. The Paddington horizon will be their memorial. Everyone is now on trial, not least local democracy.”
