The developer says yes:
http://lymebayleisure.co.uk/seaton-heights/
but EDDC says no: the site is listed as “awaiting decision” because no Section 106 agreement has yet been signed.
These can take months so perhaps Seaton should not bring out the champagne just yet.
Please do note that Chief Executive Mark Williams cannot bend or break these laws – YOU have the power here, not him.
“Holding decision-makers accountable
“Overview and scrutiny committees are empowered to question elected members who sit on the council’s Cabinet and council employees,[5] and representatives of certain other organisations,[6] and to make recommendations to those people. Committees are able to investigate any issue which affects the local area, or the area’s inhabitants, whether or not it is the direct responsibility of the council’s Cabinet[7]
By law, Overview and Scrutiny must have the right to ‘call-in‘[8] decisions – i.e. ask the decision-maker to think again, or to refer the decision to the full council if it is believed that the decision-maker has taken a decision in contravention of the council’s budget or policy framework.[9] To be called in, decisions usually need to be “key decisions”.[10]”
Notes:
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overview_and_Scrutiny#Overview_and_Scrutiny_in_England
EDDC has not updated the Local Plan Inspector since the end of August 2014.
Memo to EDDC: he might appreciate an update from you.
Or are you afraid that, because you are obliged to publish any correspondence with him straight away, there are things you would rather the public didn’t know?
“… The Exeter Megarider zone is being extended to include the new town of Cranbrook, with the cost of a daily ticket falling from £5.50 to £3.60 and the cost of a weekly ticket reducing from £20 to £14, savings of 35 per cent and 30 per cent respectively.
….. Stagecoach South West’s managing director, Michael Watson, said: “Exeter is a real success story with the city growing at an exponential rate and more and more towns forming part of the catchment area.”
So, if people from other parts of East Devon want to work at Skypark and use public transport to get there, they will pay substantially more than the people of Exeter or Cranbrook to get there.
“Economic growth” – well, for some, yes, for others – not a chance.
Source: http://www.cranbrookherald.com/news/stagecoach_announce_cranbrook_bus_fare_reduction_1_3813376
In hindsight, might Council Leader have done better than appear on TV in Feniton on a cold, very wet and very windy day dressed in a lightweight suit? And where the BBC presenter had to shelter him under her umbrella.
While other outdoor contributors were dressed in fleeces and wellies and had on sensible rainwear, he must have felt extremely miserable.
He appeared to have just got out of his car without a thought for what the outdoor weather was like.
That’s what comes of running a council from warm offices where most of the time doors are firmly shut because most of the endless meetings are secret!
Today’s Midweek Herald carries a story that the residents of Uplyme, with the help of East Devon District Council, did work along a stream to lessen the risk of flooding. Unfortunately, although this has helped, it may now mean that they will find it hard or impossible to apply for grants for major works to improve the situation further.
Rather like Sleepimg Beauty some previously somnolent EDDC councillors appear to be waking up after spending most of their time during this current council asleep.
They are popping up at parish council meetings (particularly to support current planning applications) and their photographs are appearing like a rash in local newspapers.
It wouldn’t have anything to do with council elections getting closer and still no six year land supply would it?
Would this also explain the sudden decision to extend Cranbrook by a further 25% from 6,000 houses to 7,500?
Speaking of which, a new wheeze seems to have made an appearance. We have heard of a local councillor asking EDDC for details of pre-application advice to an applicant and being refused and told to submit A Freedom of Information request – the due date for which would mean the answer (if indeed there was one) would arrive after the application had been to the Development Management Committee!
Still available on iPlayer.
Basically, Wain Homes say they have not installed the attenuation tanks that should have bedn installed BEFORE any home was occupied because they want to install different ones. Six houses are now occupied, likely to increase to 15 by Christmas.
Why have the tanks not been installed?
Because Wain Homes intend to extend the site with more houses and to do so will need bigger or more tanks.
Just one problem: they have not submitted further plans for more houses and the Planning Inspector recently ruled that only the current number was sustainable (in part because of the tanks) in the village.
Wain Homes refused to allow the BBC reporter on their site and refused a comment.
A Google search on Wain Homes will show that this is by no means the first time that they have courted controversy … particularly in Cornwall.
Thank heavens the district councillor for Feniton is hard-working Susie Bond and not its former incumbent disgraced ex-councillor Graham Brown, under whose watch huge numbers of houses were planned for the village with no apparent discouragement from him – indeed he was often absent from crucial meetings and did not speak up for residents at council meetings where they were discussed.
At the time he was Chairman of the East Devon Business Forum and had been Chairman of the first Local Plan Panel (2007-2011) whose work was thrown out by the incoming council in 2011 only to see their plan similarly thrown out earlier this year by the Planning Inspectorate.
Had we had a Local Plan in place it is unlikely that the current situation would have happened at all.
Job Description
£33,998 – £37,578 per annum (plus Market Supplement of £1,239)
East Devon District Council is ambitious for our district and our residents. We live in a beautiful part of the world, with much of our landscape falling into an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. As well as delivering great services every day, we plan carefully for a sustainable future by delivering quality jobs and good local homes for local people.
Joining our talented legal team, you will support our Corporate Legal and Democratic Services Manager in providing a highly efficient and effective legal service. You will offer your first-class legal advice mainly in property development and regeneration work to our council officers, committees and sub-committees outside bodies. You will draft, negotiate and complete related legal documents, as well as establishing and maintaining partnership agreements.
A qualified solicitor, you will bring plenty of in-depth knowledge in property development/regeneration. With relevant experience in these areas, you will advise and communicate with in-house clients and elected members on a range of complex matters. You will have an eye for detail and superb organisational skills, which will enable you to juggle a heavy workload. Flexible and innovative in your approach, you will make things happen and help us to positively develop new areas of practice.
With outstanding communication skills, you will be confident influencing others and providing high level advice in a clear and appropriate way. A valid driving licence and own car are essential (reasonable adjustments may be possible according to the Equality Act).
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-devon-29698476
Unfortunately, he is also the Mayor which is not quite so easy to change.
The (ex) Leader sacked the majority of his Cabinet (5 members out of nine) because they did not agree with his decisions, now his colleagues have decided to sack him.
Just shows what backbenchers can do … if they have the will.
Which puts them at odds with our (Tory) council which savaged Independent councillor Claire Wright when she suggested they too should support this. Many EU countries have low or no VAT for their tourism industries.
http://www.westernmorningnews.co.uk/MPs-tourism-VAT-cuts/story-23271046-detail/story.html
However, our two MPs side with EDDC.
… who slipped away quietly yesterday after having managed to avoid scrutiny of his role in the East Devon Business Forum for the past 18 months – but then EVERYTHING avoids scrutiny at EDDC now.
Will he pop up in South Somerset where the perfect job for him seems to have been recently created?
Only a perfectly timed question from Cllr Claire Wright to Deputy CEO Richard Cohen, most appropriately at yesterday’s Overview and Scrutiny (O&S) Committee meeting, obliged Mr Cohen to mention that it happened to be Nigel Harrison’s last day at the office that very same day.
Mr Harrison was of course due to be the Lead Officer at a special O&S sub-committee, the so-called Business TAFF, although he had kept out of public view since the Telegraph’s Councillors for hire story broke (March 2013), and his expected resignation confirmed last month, came as no surprise to many. See http://eastdevonalliance.org/2014/09/24/lead-officer-of-stalled-business-taff-to-quietly-disappear/
So it seems that the fledgling Task and Finish Forum (TAFF) charged by the O&S Committee to carry out ‘an in-depth study’ on the relationship between EDDC and what was called the East Devon Business Forum (EDBF), has had its wings clipped yet again.The TAFF has been grounded for well over a year as the police investigation into key witness ex-councillor Graham Brown has dragged on. Now that another key player, the Economic Development Manager, has melted away, along with the Monitoring Officer in question, and of course the EDBF itself, will the Business TAFF ever get to fly?
More on the subject at http://eastdevonalliance.org/2014/08/04/eddc-ministry-of-magic/
Tim Wood seems to have been misled on two matters which cropped up last night at the O&S committee which he chairs.
1. The first was in response to this question from Marianne Rixson of East Devon Alliance :
‘At the Newton Poppleford Parish Council (30th Sept), Councillor Potter reported on a recent meeting of the Local Government Association. He quoted a government minister as saying that there would be no district councils left in 10 yrs’ time.
Given this prediction, will your scrutiny committee need to urgently explore the possibility that the millions of pounds dedicated to the Knowle move will prove to be a total waste of taxpayers’ money?
Could you please begin straightaway by asking Richard Cohen tonight to tell you how much it would cost to refurbish the present purpose-built Knowle offices, funded by the possible sale of part or whole of the former hotel building on the site?’
Tim Wood mumbled the reply that he believed Cllr Potter had been misquoted. Those who attended the Newton Poppleford Parish Council meeting, including 20 or so local residents and various East Devon Alliance members, heard and were astonished by Cllr Potter’s statement. Cllr Tim Wood was not at that meeting, so would he kindly check the recording of it?
2.The second was about comments made last week regarding the weakness of EDDC’s Scrutiny Committee, when EDDC’s Electoral Registration Officer (ERO) and Chief Executive, Mark Williams was summoned to a Parliamentary Select Committee unhappy with his ERO performance. Richard Thurlow ,Chair of Save Our Sidmouth, requested that the comments be addressed by tighter scrutiny of council officers.
Tim Wood read out a prepared (by whom?)statement to the effect that this was no concern of his O&S Committee, but purely a matter between the ERO and the Electoral Commission. Would he kindly check the LGA link below, which clearly states:
“Committees are able to investigate any issue which affects the local area, or the area’s inhabitants, whether or not it is the direct responsibility of the council’s Cabinet.”
See: s9F(2)(d) and (e), Local Government Act 2000, http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2011/20/schedule/2/part/1/enacted
Cllr Wood and his O&S Committee members might like to re-read and reflect on what was said about them http://data.parliament.uk/writtenevidence/committeeevidence.svc/evidencedocument/political-and-constitutional-reform-committee/voter-engagement-in-the-uk/oral/14118.html
EDA followers will remember our report of the O&S Committe resolve made in January this year : http://sidmouthindependentnews.wordpress.com/2014/01/31/council-watchdog-shows-its-teeth-over-ballooning-costs-of-the-knowle-move/
Eight months on, there are signs that the Council watchdog has been undergoing obediency training…..
An apparently tamed Overview and Scrutiny Chair Tim Wood cast a deciding vote to accept an unelected council officers’ report last night. He made almost no contribution to his committee’s debate on the uncertainties, omissions, and setbacks in Richard Cohen’s latest update on EDDC office relocation, except to ask the approximate size of floorspace that a revamped EDDC would require.Richard Cohen’s answer: 3,300 sq metres.
How does this compare with the floorspace of the purpose built Knowle offices? We’ll remind readers on a following link to be posted shortly.
For full account of last night’s meeting, see http://www.claire-wright.org/index.php/post/eddc_scrutiny_cttee_votes_against_holding_cabinet_to_account_which_is_its_j
Sounds lovely doesn’t it? Developer St Modwyn has announcec that Skypark is to have 5 acres with a tree-lined avenue, grassland and hedges with “exercise stations” and woodland.
But one question arises: would this have happened if Skypark had managed to get more tenants or is it landscaping over the cracks? Or landscaping to hide what is behind the hedges?
And no amount of landscaping will alter the fact that the development is sandwiched between a main road and an airport runway, with a gas production unit and a 24 hour parcel delivery and collection service as its main tenants so far.
The developer exhibition for the extension to the extension of Cranbrook took place at the Younghayes community centre in Cranbrook on Thursday 16 October from mid-day to 6 pm.
There was very little advance notice of the exhibition (most people heard about it only the day before on the local news) and those hours would have excluded many working people from seeing it and asking searching questions about the “suggestions” the developers have put forward about the infrastructure that MIGHT support the extra dwellings.
Surely this cannot be the only “public consultation” on these plans?
Oh, and do these new houses count towards the Local Plan unlike earlier ones? And what will be the difference between affordable housing promised and delivered?
But despite strong and specific criticism tonight, by several Councillors and the members of the public, of Richard Cohen’s controversial update on Knowle office relocation, the Overview & Scrutiny Committee Chair, Tim Wood and others voted …to note the report!!
More on tonight’s O&S meeting to follow.
Elephants and Dark Forces rampaged around the room at EDDC’s first full council since July last night and the public address system squealed and howled as if possessed by Harry Potter’s Dementors (or perhaps by the elephants).
The man with the screwdriver on the night was the Chief Executive himself, but his best fiddlings with an array of knobs could not prevent speeches from the dais sound like Darth Vader (mixed movie metaphors here surely?) summoning those from the Dark Side of the Sid Valley and beyond. Or was it a protest on the part of the elephants because they were missing the dulcet tones of unusually absent Leader Paul Diviani? Maybe see if one of those miraculously recruited 25 new canvassers knows a good sparks before the next meeting, Mark.
Longest-serving councillor Douglas Hull did his best to deliver the devastating news he had just received in the previous hour that Axminster Hospital is to lose all its overnight beds, but for some reason fellow Axminsterite and Chairman of the Council Graham Godbeer did everything he could to fluster him, made all the more menacing by the Darth Vader microphone set-up.
It was not dirty laundry Mr Godbeer or Leader-for-the-Night Andrew Moulding (also Axminster) wanted washing in public. Not when there were so many best kept village and long service awards to be dished out. Whilst nobody would be grumpy enough to deny these good people due recognition, it does make it more soul destroying for this to be followed by bland supplementary answers to incisive written questions (and bland written answers) from Independent councillors sent in prior to the meeting.
The Independents shrewdly chose to reserve comment on many matters until the Leader’s chair can be filled again by Mr Diviani in person. Other Tory councillors must have known it was understudy night because we lost count of the apologies for absence. Unusual this for October – it is usually August when councillors are away from their posts. Perhaps Harry Potter or Darth Vader strike again and those unavailable were preparing themselves for Halloween by sharpening their fangs or preparing for an assault by the Dark Forces at a later date – like election day, perhaps.
Claire Wright did her best, yet again, to induce Deputy Exec Richard Cohen to give the people of East Devon the merest hint of a suspicion of a whiff of what his action resisting the Information Commissioner was currently costing us, but he seemed neither to have an estimate of what has been spent so far, nor any idea of what final cost would ultimately be. Not sure how this sits with public sector procurement policy?
Two questions from the public. Paul Arnott asked Mark Williams why he had not told Tim Wood, Chairman of the Overview and Scrutiny Committe, that he had been summoned before an all-party Select Committee at Westminster on electoral matters to explain why he had done no legally-obligatory door-to-door canvassing of the electorate in recent years. Mr Williams replied that he had taken “soundings”, and that’s why he hadn’t told Cllr Wood. “Soundings” lovely word that – should be the opposite of transparent.
Paul Freeman gave a forensic analysis, following up his lauded previous work, on why Mr Williams stated strategy at Westminster of relying on land-line phone canvassing might not be working in the era of the mobile phone, and mentioned again Cllr Eileen Wragg’s experience of finding house-after-house in one Exmouth street with unregistered voters (a fact brought to the attention of Mr Williams at the time).
The Tories did their best to fluster the redoubtable Mr Freeman with their usual background rumblings, and Chairman Godbeer tried to cut him off before his three minutes was up (is this a portent of things to come: cutting down the number of people who can speak and then gradually cutting down the time to nothing!) but they would do well to listen again to what he was saying. Not least, why South Somerset, where Mr Williams is also CEO, has discovered more than tens thousand extra voters in recent years by knocking on doors, while East Devon (CEO Mark Williams) has discovered none by not knocking on any doors.
Mark Williams thanked Mr Freeman him for being the cause of his being summoned to Westminster, where he said he was able to boast to the nation of a consistently more than 90% registration of the electorate. The elephant in the room here was, more than 90% of what, precisely? More than 90% of 100% of the electorate minus the ?% of missing voters. Difficult equation to process that one.
The other standout event was the presentation of a 900 strong petition to the council from the people of Seaton asking Helen Parr’s Development Management Committee not to approve any planning application for a site next to Tesco other than for the much promised and much needed hotel. The site is now being hunted down by McCarthy Stone as yet another retirement complex. An excellent speech from Seaton councillor Steve Williams, followed by the delivery of the petition, which will now be put before the DMC as a consideration before any application is debated, was probably the only moment when the electorate were actually heard in the entire pantomime.
Our Electoral Registration Officer, Chief Executive Mark Williams, leads councillors to believe that he was summoned to the Parliamentary Select Committee on Voter Engagement to give them his personal words of wisdom, such is the efficiency with which he approaches his job – tearing up the rule book here, capturing telephone users there. All in the name of saving us all money (if I lived in South Somerset where he follows a different path should I be begging him to tear up the rule book there too)?
And, why then, did he not blow his trumpet to his councillors when he was given the invitation rather than attempting to explain why he had kept it secret from them? It would be a Press Officer’s Dream Press Release surely? His excuse was that it is an entirely separate role and nothing to do with them.
He also believes he deserves praise for his “efficiency” in not sending out door-to-door canvassers to the more than 3,000 homes as yet unregistered, preferring instead telephone and internet methods of persuasion.
Just two small points: to telephone someone who has not registered, you need their telephone number – how do you get it if they are under the radar or have private mobile phones only? And what do you do if they are in one of the many homes in East Devon which does not have an internet service – something he admitted is at a lower level than average in the district?
Still, problem solved, in spite of this “efficiency” 25 canvassers will be trecking the wilds of East Devon shortly tracking down the “Refuseniks” (Mr Williams’ own word for those not yet registered).
Might we see a BBC adventure programme on how these intrepid explorers cross the wilds of the Blackdown Hills and the concrete jungle of Cranbrook?
Oh, and who is he responsible to in this role? He says he is responsible to the Chief Executive (himself) yet in Parliament he corrected himself and said “I suppose councillors”. Best get that straight, Mr Williams and tell us: is the role and its performance within the remit of the Overview and Scrutiny Committee or is it not?
A one word answer, yes or no, will do.
East Devon Watch 