Yes, most of us have realised that. Why was it ok for one developer and not for another?
Of course, a re-convening of the EDDC wokring group that was supposed to look into the relationship between the council and the East Devon Business Forum might well have answered such questions ….. yet another reason why it remains in the long grass …
In a long letter in today’s edition of Pullman’s View from Sidmouth , an Axminster resident, berates EDDC for the strange way in which it operates. In a phrase echoing one by Clive Aslet in his Daily Telegraph article ‘Sidmouth Mans the Barricades, the author of the letter, Michael Blagrove, says, “I am glad that I am not alone in detecting a nasty smell emanating from The Knowle… the unmistakable whiff of aloofness and unaccountability.” Mr Blagrove goes on to explain why in his experience, “the officers of the council seem to be under the impression that they are rather too grand to act as “public servants” in the accepted manner..” He is particularly scathing about the Chief Executive’s dual role in South Somerset and East Devon, commenting that ” He may well consider himself to be a jack of all trades, but clearly he is master of none.”
The letter can be viewed in full at http://www.viewfromonline, Tues Oct 28th 2014.
Clive Aslet, Editor-at-Large of Country Life, made some similar observations after a visit to Sidmouth two years ago. See final paragraph of his report at this link http://saveoursidmouth.com/2012/10/23/save-our-sidmouth-reaches-the-daily-telegraph/
Exmouth seafront traders have now been given notice by landlord EDDC prior to redevelopment. Some are planning to close shortly.
As the article says, a double blow for Seaton as EDDC has already agreed to drop all the affordable housing – set originally at 40%.
It has been noticed that recent press releases from EDDC have a new internet address:
devon.vuelio.uk.com
This is apparently specialist software used by (presumably) Devon County Council and other district councils in the area (Teignbridge seems to have the same address).
In its advertising blurb, the company which produces the software says:
Proactive stakeholder engagements, powerful media and parliamentary contacts, in-depth monitoring of coverage and outcomes, and other features makes Vuelio the most comprehensive solution for managing the media and other stakeholder relationships that are critical to your organisation.
Vuelio ensures your communications teams have easy access to all the intelligence – briefing papers, strategy documents, and lines to take – on all of the issues affecting their organisation. They are ready to react to queries from any stakeholder group and are armed with all the information they need to ensure that they address these stakeholder interactions in a personalised manner and deliver a consistent message to avoid dangerous discrepancies.
Source:http://www.aimediacomms.com/vuelio/
And it goes on to say:
Capture key details of all your stakeholders, the organisations to which they are affiliated, their power and influence and relationships between them. Includes the most comprehensive journalist and parliamentary database for finding the right contacts for your message.
Source: http://www.aimediacomms.com/vuelio/key-features/
It also appears that it can be used for computer-generated monitoring of Freedom of Information complaints:
Vuelio CM transforms the normally labour intensive management of FOI requests and complaints into an automated, efficient electronic process. It also allows users to easily capture, store, and process requests in line with legislative requirements.
With Vuelio CM, you will never miss a deadline; alerts and reminders keep you posted when action is required. Powerful searching helps with the identification of precedents and similar enquiries increasing response times and reducing duplication of effort. Easy access to management reports enables the monitoring of workloads, and prioritisation of resources.
Here are details of one of the reputation management seminars they have hostedd:
Setting aside the dreadful jargon – why exactly does a Press Office require such software and how much is it costing US to manage THEIR reputation. Or is our Press Office now a robot!
If more people than ever are on low wages should we:
a. be building more REALLY affordable housing near places where they live and work
c. or building more high price executive homes on green fields in rural areas with poor commuting facilities.
Common sense says a, EDDC says b.
“With a local plan you’re balancing so many tensions and factors. I defy anybody to do it in less than two to three years.”
Peter Gruen, cabinet member for housing, Leeds Council
Or, in the case of East Devon District Council, 7 years and counting …..
And Leeds is more complex!
Should you feel the urge to write to your MP or distrct councillors, as we are sure MANY of you do, this site will make it very easy
Tony Hogg, the Police and Crime Commissioner, will attend next month’s Overview and Scrutiny committee. EDA has heard that Councillors have been invited to offer questions to put to him before his presentation to the committee. Alternatively, Councillors can wait until the meeting itself, but Mr Hogg’s office have asked for notice of any questions where possible.
Information sent to us by an EDA correspondent, with a following comment:
An article on p.13 of today’s issue of Sidmouth Herald states:
“A fall in the number of people claiming Job Seekers’ Allowance in Sidmouth and in Ottery St Mary has contributed to the lowest Devon-wide claimant figures on record.”
61 claimants in Sidmouth
32 claimants in Ottery St Mary
0.9% of working age population v national average of 2.3%
________________________________________
Only 61 claimants? How does that square with EDDC plans for 1,350 jobs planned for Sidford and their ambitions to reduce commuting?
This letter from Tony Green of the East Devon Alliance, was published in today’s Sidmouth Herald, with the title, ‘Frightening stuff’ : As the nights draw in 18.10.14
…show some disgruntlement with EDDC.
https://www.streetlife.com/p/wGsx0/
https://www.streetlife.com/conversation/w6mud6xf5wm3/
Is the present National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) based on correct targets?
The latest comments on the Parliamentary Enquiry into the NPPF are now visible on the national Community Voice on Planning website, so please see the home page for a link. http://covop.org/ .
East Devon Alliance is of course an active participant in CoVoP.
Putting in the words “council new offices vanity projects” brings up SCORES of entries for councils all over the country wanting to spend millions and millions of pounds on themselves. Here are just a few entries from the first couple of pages. All of these examples have taken place in the last 5 years during which we have had a dreadful recession and austerity cuts and there are many more examples:
http://insidecroydon.com/2013/01/11/140-million-the-cost-of-our-councils-secrecy-and-vanity/
http://www.eadt.co.uk/news/politics_2_480/coastal_new_council_offices_could_cost_millions_1_3158985
It’s rather ironic when pensioners are told to heat only one room because they can’t afford their heating bills to see councillors being profligate with our money because they want their taste of luxury.
Electoral Ommission
A really hard-hitting report about the failure of the Electoral Commission to get to grips with administrative bungling, fraud and blatent “looking the other way” to avoid responsibility. This 60 page report makes frightening reading about a subject we already find worrying enough with a Chief Executive who reports to himself not being at all worried that he lost 6,000 plus voters at the European Elections and finding Parliamentary scrutiny about it an irritation.
Fortunately, he does not have to worry about local scrutiny as the Overview and Scrutiny committee majority party members agreed to do what he said and refuse to deal with the matter – on the casting vote of its majority party Chairman.
Here is its introduction:
“This study reviews progress seven years after the Committee on Standards in Public Life’s 2007 Report and poses five main questions:
How inaccurate is the electoral register? To what extent is administrative failure responsible for any inaccuracies that occur?
What is the extent of voting fraud in the UK?
Has the Electoral Commission implemented the main recommendation of the
Committee on Standards in Public Life, that the Electoral Commission should focus on administering elections rather than policymaking and on promoting participation?
Are the delays being considered by the Electoral Commission in implementing individual voter registration and in introducing the requirement for voter identification at polling stations justified and acceptable?
Are measures being taken by the Cabinet Office to improve the accuracy of the electoral registers for the May 2015 General Election adequate?
The four main conclusions of this report are:
The administration of elections in the UK remains dangerously inefficient and seriously open to fraud.
There remains within the various bodies responsible for electoral administration a culture of complacency and denial.
The Electoral Commission has taken too few meaningful steps to address the recommendation of the Committee on Standards in Public Life that it focus on its regulatory role.
There is an emerging danger of partisan divisions between the two main political parties about whether or not to tolerate this situation. Too often, a bogus dilemma has been cited between the aims of encouraging voting by members of socially disadvantaged groups and guarding against fraud.
Too little has changed since the Committee on Standards in Public Life published its report into the Electoral Commission in January 2007.4 The main change between 2007 and 2014 is that the headline statistics show that the problems of inaccuracy in the electoral registers, already serious in 1981 and worse in 2007, have continued to amplify.
Good electoral administration is a regulatory matter requiring determined administrative action. Yet the bodies responsible for such administration – local government authorities, the Cabinet Office (currently responsible for electoral matters at central government level), and the Electoral Commission – have too often failed to act. It is too easy to blame sociological factors and voter disengagement for what are administrative shortcomings.”
Source: http://www.policyexchange.org.uk/images/publications/electoral%20omission.pdf
Currently only highly localised infrastructure can be constructed when developments take place – they must be tightly linked to that development, though in some cases even that is not completed: developers strike down all affordable housing and don’t put in attenuation tanks unless threatened.
We have no local plan so we cannot charge developers “Community Infrastrructure Levy” – an extra charge based on the site and size of the development that, if in place, they could not avoid.
As a result, for example, East Devon has woeful public transport. This has bedn highlighted by the planned community hospital closures. How do you get from Ottery to Seaton or from Axminster to Budleigh Salterton without a car – if you do not qualify for ambulances? The answer is: you get a taxi there and back. Let’s say a very conservative £20 -£30 per round trip.
Most people as inpatients or visitors to our community hospitals are elderly. Many, if they can drive, cannot drive at night. What do they do if they cannot afford the luxury of taxis to visit relatives?
And let’s not get started about how we all get to Skypark!
Blame? Buck stopping? Our district council. More interested in helping developers to build more houses for more people needing more services, no interest at all in dealing with the fallout.
Our only remedy? The ballot box in May 2015.
Does politics work for locals?
IN all the years I have been doing this job (too many according to my critics out there), I can’t remember a time when there was so much dissatisfaction with local government. Why is this?
You won’t be surprised, but I have a theory.
When I first started covering rural and borough councils in East Devon and occasionally Devon County Council, 50 years ago, politics had very little to do with it. We were all aware that East Devon was predominantly blue but the focus was very much on serving the electorate.
Councillors got little or no expenses and the officers were not paid such exorbitant salaries. Debates were not dominated by groups of politically affiliated councillors, with members of other political shades marginalised, and there were no grand titles such as “portfolio holders”. Matters were dealt with by committees where all councillors had an influence.
With the exception of town councils, being an elected representative today is as much a career as it is a service for many. I am not denying the amount of hours our councillors at district and county level put in, or questioning their commitment to their communities, but generally they are compensated for their efforts, especially the more capable and ambitious members who climb the political ladder. Some of them receive far in excess of the average weekly wage in this area.
I’m not talking about every councillor. I noticed when Googling councillors expenses, when I started thinking about a theme for t his week’s column, that one long serving councillor claimed only £12.50 last year.
Times change and the reorganisation to create the current three-tier system (county, district and parish/town) back in 1974 was deemed necessary. Like it or not, local government is in the politics game and it will always be that way.
This became clear to me last week after I compared the different interpretation being put on the summoning of EDDC chief executive Mark Williams to a Commons Select Committee to answer question on electoral procedures. Having read the Hansard transcript of proceedings, it didn’t seem to me that it was a wholly enjoyable experience for Mr Williams.
One district councillor emailed me to say he was “mildly disappointed” with the view I had taken but then, incredulously, went on to criticise the “tame” spin put out by his own council’s communications team. His words, not mine.
Talk to most people and they have no real interest in local government (it was ever thus) but those who have are pretty disillusioned. Controversy rages in most of the towns in Pulman’s Country at the moment but there is little faith in the ability of our elected representatives to find solutions.
I think there is also a degree of frustration among a number of long serving councillors, with some of them having already decided not to seek re-election when we go to the polls next May. The big question is: will their replacements do any better?
East Devon Watch 