If, as (current) Leader Diviani believes (as he has recently said, that the consultants reports of 2013 on relocation were “not relevant” to current meetings (and their rescheduling to end hours before the Information Commission’s decision on said disclosure) –
Why has EDZdC spent £10,000 plus on legal advisers to attempt keep them secret?
True to form, East Devon District Council’s all-Conservative Cabinet tonight voted unanimously to press on with relocation from the Knowle.
There were two questions from the public, from Dr Cathy Gardner of East Devon Alliance, and from 16-year-old Gemma Manley. (We’ll post details later)
Five Sidmouth Ward members were present (no sign of Cllr Hughes).
Graham Troman spoke out against the loss of Sidmouth jobs; the rising asset value of the Knowle site; and of the potential better use of the 1980s purpose-built offices.
Peter Sullivan asked if the Town Council would get a pay-out from EDDC to help maintain the gardens. Richard Cohen replied that a deal would probably be struck with them.
Frances Newth wondered how much the local ‘hubs’ would cost ( Cohen said “Hubs” (his own term!) “is a bit of a misnomer” . EDDC would provide services, using existing sites where possible, but this would become clearer “when we know what the needs are”.
Cllrs Drew and Kerridge didn’t have any questions, as “Everything’s been asked”.
Ward member for Exmouth, Cllr Tim Wood congratulated the Sidmouth members “for fighting so well on behalf of Sidmouth”, and said they had got “an extraordinarily good deal. “I get annoyed”, he said,”When we are told we are abusing Sidmouth’s heritage”. (Was he referring to the SVA publication, ‘A Stately Pleasure Dome’ ?).
But Cllr Pook reminded his colleagues that the relocation build costs “were going over our budget”, and that he would rather have a “break even situation” . (EDWatch note: Yes, whatever happened to “Cost neutral”?) “I take on board your challenge to keep costs down”, promised Richard Cohen.
Cllr Ian Thomas seemed to have overstepped the mark with his long list of concerns. The Leader impatiently chided him, saying “How many questions are you going to ask?” One of those questions was about risk, and what the consequences would be “in the event that no planning permission was given”.
Rounding up the debate, Cllr Diviani acknowledged that £7-8million for Knowle “was not the best deal I thought we might have got” . There was “a blight on it from the planning application that got turned down”, he claimed, putting the blame for the low price entirely on Save Our Sidmouth!!!
Frantic rearrangement of EDDC’s schedule (“Nothing to do with the election” , said Cllr Paul Diviani at this evening’s Cabinet meeting) has prompted a correspondent to send us this:
‘I trust that when the next set of EDDC councillors control the army of Knowledge communications officers, the EDDC website will continue to provide as much amusement (and possibly a bit more information) for local residents. See eddc-press-release-manageable-growth ‘
From a correspondent. Imagine if you are a new “silver surfer” when EDDC says most of its services will be offered online only!
“I started to look for where the minutes for the last Overview and Scrutiny meeting and agenda for the next one could now be found.
Answer – Nowhere!!!! Or at least not at first sight.
On the home page as it is displayed you can go to:
Planning
Recycling & rubbish
Licensing
Environmental maintenance
Council Tax
Benefits and support
Under this list is a full width slider with colour photographs advertising:
View a planning application (on your mobile)
Countryside education
Countryside volunteering
Local and Community Nature Reserves
Home safeguard
Open for business (a self-advert for this new website)
and below that some links to News and Events items.
Could I find ANYTHING about Committees? Heck no.
But eventually I found a “Show A-Z of more Services” line which when I clicked gave me some more headings:
Building control
Business and investment
Cemeteries
Community safety
Consultation and surveys
Council and democracy
Countryside
Customer services
Dogs
Elections and registering to vote
Emergency planning
Environment
Feedback and complaints
Food hygiene and safety
Freedom of Information and Data Protection
Grants and funding
Health and safety
Homelessness
Housing
Jobs and careers
Noise
Parking
Parks, gardens and recreation
Pest control
Property services
Public toilets
Regeneration projects
Seaside
Sidmouth folk week
Visit
Did you spot it? No sign of the word Committee – but with some intelligent guessing I clicked on “Council and democracy” (“Find out who your councillor is, how the council operates and agendas for meetings”) and then “Committees and Meetings” and then “Overview and scrutiny committee” and then “Minutes” and then the date and hey presto, like magic (a very slow, and unimpressive type of magic though) there they were.
What exactly does this say about the importance of councillors and the meetings they attend which make the decisions when they are buried like this. And I am pretty Internet savvy and yet I had difficulty finding the link – so how will people who are not experienced with navigating websites hope to find it???
Of course I could have put “overview scrutiny” in the search box and found the O&S Committee quickly by that route. And some people will use search immediately. But some doddery old fools (like me) will try to navigate to the page and have significant difficulties in finding it when it is hidden and so many levels down.
The “old” web site may have looked tired, but the alphabetic index at the top was intuitive and enabled you to find what you wanted fairly quickly. By comparison, this “new” website may be built on new technology, but is ease of use is very poor indeed.”
From a computer-savvy correspondent:
This morning is when EDDC are making another attempt to switch over to their new and improved (??) web site.
We should expect several things:
1. Links to documents on the old site will now be broken;
2. Links to documents on the new site before the switch over may now be broken;
3. A whole lot of information will no longer be available online – even relatively recent items (like minutes from over 12 months ago) and no longer available online – you will have to go cap in hand to (un-)democratic services to get hold of them.
Which is just what democracy needs in the run up to an election – an absence of the information needed to hold the current administration to account.
There was a warning on the old web site for a few days that it would be down from 10am, but they appear to have ignored that and started early.
Note: how (in)convenient that this should take place just before major meetings and local elections?
Comments from Grant Thornton:
Overall, our review found the expected governance arrangements to be in place and working effectively, with only 3 areas for improvement identified. These points have been discussed with and accepted by management as follows:
1) Although evidence was seen of the Council’s intention to have a Terms of Reference for the Officer Working Group, no formal record of this was found at the time of the audit. There are no concerns over the effectiveness of the Officers Working Group or the decision making processes within it. The structure and operation of the Group reflects and supports the Executive Members Group, (where a Terms of Reference had been formally agreed and documented.)
Management have agreed to formally approve the Terms of Reference of the Officer Working group at the next meeting.
2) The Monitoring Officer advised that the minutes of the Executive and Officer Working Group should be assessed at the point they are approved to consider the appropriateness of making them available publically. It was not clear from the minutes of these meetings whether this had been formally implemented.
Management have agreed to formally consider the appropriateness of releasing minutes into the public domain at the next Officer Working Group meeting.
3) The Council has responded to queries and requests for information whether raised through the Freedom of Information route or directly to officers. For the later to continue, the Council has recognised that a formal structure needs to be in place to guard against duplication of resource and ensure the information is shared appropriately.
Comments from SWAP:
EDDC have gone to Court to defend their decision regarding the partially upheld decision. The request is in relation to the publication of the project update reports (Numbers 1-6), used by the Officer Working Group. The complainant felt that they should be made available but EDDC considers that they contain commercially sensitive information. The case is currently ongoing.
In January 2014 the Monitoring Officer advised the Deputy Chief Executive and Project Manager that discussions with the Information Commissioner in respect of these cases had been helpful in guiding the Council into making appropriate decisions over the availability of minutes and reports. She commented that she was liaising with the Democratic Services Manager to update the committee report template to prompt the author to assess when a confidential committee report may be considered appropriate to put in the public domain.
The Monitoring Officer further advised that it could be appropriate for the same assessment to be made at the time meeting notes are agreed at the Executive and Officer Group. It was not clear from the minutes of these meetings whether this had been implemented. There is a risk that a consistent approach to the publication of Executive and Office Group meeting notes may not be operating effectively.
and finally:
4.2.4 The conclusions above are based solely on the results of the Model and therefore do not consider any qualitative aspects of the options, and nor have we considered the extent to which the office relocation project will meet the Council’s service or efficiency aspirations/objectives
http://eastdevon.gov.uk/council-and-democracy/committees-and-meetings/overview-and-scrutiny-committee/agendas/
… and would we get the same result?
No wonder they wanted to keep the numbers under wraps until after district council elections in May!
And just where will we put these homes? And will this number be increased by 20% because we have no 5-6 year land supply?
The press release and consultants’ reports are here:
Woodbury C of E (large development planned)
Exeter Road Primary and Brixingham Primary Exmouth (large developments planned)
West Hill Primary (large development in Ottery, development in West Hill)
Stockland Primary (no development there)
Lady Seward at Clyst St George (large developments planned)
Mrs Ethelstone’s Primary in Uplyme (large developments planned in Axminster nearby)
95% subscribed schools:
Ottery St Mary
Bassetts Farm Primary, Exmouth
Sidbury C of E (near where large industrial estate planned)
The Beacon and St Joseph’s in Exmouth
Feniton C of E (Wainhomes want to extend development)
Source:today’s Express and Echo newspaper
There are some really daft things going on prior to this General Election, for example Greenpeace, which wants politicians of ALL parties to hear its views has been banned from Sutton Harbour in Plymouth for being “too political” whereas UKIP, which also plans to be there, has been allowed:
But it isn’t quite as daft as calling housing figures in a draft local plan “politically sensitive” as EDDC just did. Still, a sensible Planning Inspector put them right and they are due out this week.
Watch this space.
“Health secretary Jeremy Hunt faces allegations of a politically motivated cover-up after the Tory head of the health select committee said his department’s refusal to publish a damning report on NHS management before the general election was not acceptable.
Sarah Wollaston, a former GP who took over the chairmanship of the committee last year, said it was not reasonable or right that a report by former Marks & Spencer boss and Tory peer Stuart Rose, which was commissioned by Hunt a year ago and completed in December, was being kept from the public. …
… Wollaston told the Observer that reports which had been commissioned by government and paid for by taxpayers should be made available at the earliest opportunity on matters of such clear public interest.
“There is far too much of this going on, with uncomfortable information being withheld,” Wollaston said. “Just as with the Chilcot report into the Iraq war, it is not right that reports paid for out of public money are not made available to the public on such vital issues as soon as possible, particularly ahead of a general election.”
Real Zorro
http://realzorro1.blogspot.co.uk/
has drawn attention to the lamentable lack of policies from East Devon’s Tories (except, of course, for HQ relocation, which is the only things that has occupied them for MONTHS) with their website bereft of information or ideas about what they would do if re-elected.
A similar state of affairs pertains over at the Tiverton and Honiton official Tory website with a post which has been on the website since well before 2010 and which is still there today (but probably not tomorrow!). And what an embarrassing post it is! No doubt once it has been drawn to their attention it will disappear but, fear not, EDW has kept a copy for posterity and took this recent screenshot (taken on 19 February 2015 but the same page is still there today).
http://www.tivertonhonitonconservatives.co.uk/campaigns
On the webpage (under the heading “Campaigns”) EDDC Tories state that UNDER LABOUR in 2009:
♦ There were 200 fewer rural schools (there are now even fewer)
♦ 1,400 rural post offices had been lost since 2000 (even more post offices have since been lost)
♦ 384 police stations had closed in the shires in Labour’s first two terms (even more police stations have been closed and we have far fewer police on the streets
♦ Dramatically widened funding gap between urban and rural areas (the funding gap between urban and rural areas has widened even further)
and they promised that, if they were successful in 2010 they would:
have an agenda that would:
RESPECT RURAL PEOPLE
♦ Give rural communities a voice to decide their own future
♦ Respect the rural way of life
♦ Only regulate where self regulation fails
♦ Fairer rural funding
They said that they would
EMPOWER RURAL COMMUNITIES
♦ Return real power to individuals and communities
♦ Give villages the right to build their own affordable homes
♦ Allow councils to oppose development planned for green belt land
THEY SAID THEY WOULD
PROTECT RURAL SERVICES
♦ Realise the social value of vital rural services like post offices
♦ Give parents the power to stop rural schools closing and open new ones
♦ Allow rural public services to diversify
♦ Pilot new rural transport solutions
They said that they would
REVIVE THE RURAL ECONOMY:
♦ Cut tax rates for small businesses to encourage growth and protect jobs
♦ Allow councils to offer rural business rate discounts
♦ Simplify the planning system to improve accountability
♦ Reduce the burden of regulation to give businesses more freedom
Good enough as a 4 star hotel, not good enough for our Tories:
http://www.sidmouthherald.co.uk/news/knowle_from_4_star_hotel_to_council_offices_1_3982211
Twenty-five Freedom of Information requests appear on just the first page of EDDC’s pages on the “whatdotheyknow” website.
https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/body/east_devon_district_council
13 of them (some nearly a month old) are “awaiting classification” and until they are “classified” nothing happens
2 have been successful
1 (recent one) is awaiting a response
9 are “awaiting internal review” (i.e. refused but request made to review it as you cannot go on to complain to the Information Commissioner)
So, more than one-third of requests have been refused. See the link to see what these cover.
For Chairman Paul Arnott’s challenge see:
EDDC’s announcement in today’s Sidmouth Herald, of its preferred buyer for Knowle, could have massive repercussions, not least at the May District Council election.The plan is to change this prime employment site, and shrink the surrounding historic parkland, to make a residential development exclusively not for young people. The purpose is to relocate the District Council offices, to a much older building (Exmouth Town Hall) requiring major refurbishment, and a not-yet-built office at Honiton.
Here’s just one local conversation on the topic https://www.streetlife.com/conversation/3h3lq15pbi7i/
Photo supplied by https://sidmouthindependentnews.wordpress.com
So, the housing figures ARE to be published because our Planning Inspector says they are NOT politically sensitive:
In yesterday’s Express and Echo Leader of EDDC Paul Diviani is quoted as saying: “Mr Thickett [the Planning Inspector in charge of our Local Plan – the man who threw the last version out] did not specifically instruct the council to publish the figures before the election but, in response to a suggestion that the matter might end up being delayed by the elections, he said he expected the council to get on with it at the earliest opportunity.”
Just a few words were missing there. What Mr Thickett said was: “I will need to see evidence of any proposed changes [to the Local Plan, which includes the new housing figures] as soon as they have been agreed AND BY MID APRIL AT THE LATEST. Yours, etc …
Now, that sounds very much like an instruction to us!
East Devon Watch 