Category Archives: Knowle/Honiton/Exmouth relocation
Exmouth Town Hall refurbishment not costed and borrowing may be needed
Cost neutral my ….!
“In response to a question about the cost of accelerating refurbishment of the Exmouth Town Hall if relocation to that site (as part of a dual site option) was agreed, it was confirmed that some capital could be used, but some borrowing may also be necessary which would incur costs. This acceleration has only been discussed and not agreed – the implications of it will need to be fully costed. At present there was no allocation in the capital budget to the refurbishment of Exmouth Town Hall. …”
Extract from minutes of Overview and Scrutiny Committee 14 January 2015:
Which committee will scrutinise the fiasco of the Draft Local Plan?
Seems Overview and Scrutiny are loathe to overview and scrutinise anything, especially now the elections are looming. Audit and Governance don’t seem too concerned. about it, now they have been panicked into dealing with the relocation scandal. The Development Management Committee seems content to spend all its time dogging their hats to developers large and small and so has no time or interest, relying in “updates” that update nothing.
No guards and therefore no-one guarding the guards.
Lamentable AND shocking.
“Quite honestly, we have fallen flat on our face” with the relocation project, warns Honiton Councillor, Peter Halse
At last night’s Overview and Scrutiny Committee senior Tory councillor Peter Halse lashed EDDC’s Relocation Project. He said it risked the Council’s reputation for financial prudence. “At the time (the relocation project) looked OK, but now, with hindsight, it looks pretty bad….Quite honestly we have fallen flat on our face!” He was sceptical about Deputy CEO Richard Cohen’s claimed energy savings, and said employees based in the newer 1970/1980s building, “can’t see any reason why they’d want to move”. He concluded “It’s not just the leadership who are responsible. We need to look this thing full in the face. We can get out of this”.
Sidmouth resident Richard Eley, had already mauled Richard Cohen’s assumptions on future energy cost savings which were “way out of line” with those predicted by the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC). Mr Cohen in response welcomed the fact that auditors would now be taking “a useful look under the bonnet, as it were”. In the meantime a preferred developer had now been selected for a mix of care home and residential properties at Knowle. The planning process would have to be gone through by the developer and further attempts to delay the Knowle sale have been factored in to the costs, he added.
When Independent Cllr Claire Wright expressed concern that EDDC’s planning committee would be under extreme pressure to grant permission to develop the Knowle because the whole relocation project depended on it, she was accused of casting doubt on the integrity of councillors.
Independent Councillor Roger Giles didn’t get a clear answer from Mr Cohen about where his 10% annual energy inflation figures came from, only that they were “conservative”! And there was no answer to Cllr Giles’ second question about how much extra the renovation of Exmouth Town Hall would cost.
Tory Cllr Graham Troman (Vice Chair of the OSC) said the Knowle site was an appreciating asset while refurbished offices or new-build on an industrial estate (e.g. Heathpark) would not recoup the money spent on them.
Tory Cllr Sheila Kerridge urged her colleagues to show transparency and “not to be seen to be doing things underhand….Put the matter on hold until we know the figures”. (echoing Cllr Claire Wright’s proposal voted down a few weeks earlier.
Chair Tim Wood concluded that all would be examined in great detail by the auditors so there was no cause for alarm.
The second burning issue was the suggested reform of Task and Finish Forums.
A proposal from a Democratic Services Officer (advised by CEO Mark Williams?) that the scope of TAFFs should be proposed by officers, seemed pretty well acceptable to the obedient majority – though it is going to be thought about first by one of Cllr Bloxham’s Think Tanks.
The controversial Business TAFF will continue with the same members as before, but without too much embarrassing looking back at relations with the East Devon Business Forum whose demise seemed to be lamented by Deputy Leader Andrew Moulding. He assured everyone that the TAFF will now have perfectly respectable relations with the new East Devon Business Group which genuinely represented the District’s entrepreneurs.It was time to turn the page, he said, and stop attacking the perceived influence of the EDBF on crucial planning decisions. The representative from Axminster concluded,fittingly, that he was not “trying to sweep anything under the carpet!”
Robust scrutiny of relocation figures…will tonight’s OSC root out answers to SOS questions?
Robust scrutiny of relocation figures..some pointers from SOS for today’s Overview and Scrutiny Committee (6.30pm, Knowle).
Draft Local Plan – update (and not good news)
Recall the Inspector suggested October 2014 as a suitable date for EDDC to deliver an amended Draft Local Plan to him for re-examination. Now even October 2015 is looking unlikely.
And contrast the figure of £172,000 spent so far on this project with the £700,000 spent on HQ relocation plans – much of it on the abortive attempt to relocate to Skypark.
Just half of the money spent on Skypark, if redirected to resources to finalise the Local Plan, could almost certainly have had us protected from rapacious developers. A hidden cost of relocation.
Conservative majority EDDC chose to prioritise relocation of its offices over the Local Plan. Remember this at the May 2015 district elections.
Knowle relocation scrutiny: some maps
As decided by the Full Council (17 Dec 2014), EDDC’s office relocation project is to have much more thorough scrutiny than it has had to date. Both the internal and external auditors are already in the process of producing new reports (by late February 2015) with as much content as possible to be in the public domain, as agreed at January’s Audit & Governance Committee.
This week’s Overview and Scrutiny Committee, charged with the close scrutiny of other aspects of the relocation project, may find helpful the maps and comment at this link: http://futuresforumvgs.blogspot.co.uk/2015/01/knowle-relocation-project-and-politics.html
Knowle relocation and “public consultation” – a blast from the past
Information Commissioner v. East Devon District Council at Exeter Magistrates Court in August 2014.
We were told that the judgment in this case (about whether EDDC should be forced to disclose reports on relocation) is due this month – we shall see.
In the meantime this “blast from the past” – what EDDC called its “stakeholder consultation” should give us all a good laugh:
https://sidmouthindependentnews.wordpress.com/2013/07/26/from-our-correspondent-1-fly-me/
A question for the SWAP internal auditor
At the last Audit and Governance meeting, the internal auditor – SWAP – said they wanted electors to ask questions about Knowle relocation (as if there haven’t been enough!
So here is one:
What is the difference between “cost neutral” and “no additional cost” when speaking of Knowle relocation?
We ask because one of the answers to a question asked about this on “What Do They Know” is as follows:
Question: Could you confirm that the council still wishes to render any final decision as cost neutral?
Answer: To be specific, the Council is committed to delivering new offices at no additional cost to council tax payers.
https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/relocation_manager#incoming-398480
Now, obviously there is something different about the two phrases or the answer would not have been so specific.
We are keeping our beady eyes on this one – the devil is in the detail and detail is hard to find at Knowle.
Does Richard Cohen know more than the Energy Minister?
First Capacity Market auction guarantees security of supply at low cost
Ed Davey, Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, said:
… ‘This is fantastic news for bill-payers and businesses. We are guaranteeing security at the lowest cost for consumers. We’ve done this by ensuring that we get the best out of our existing power stations and unlocking new investment in flexible plant.’ …
… Our best estimate for the average annual net on domestic electricity bills over the period 2016 to 2030 remains an estimated £2 (in 2012 prices). This is equivalent to a 0.3% average increase in domestic bills.”
Mr Cohen if EDDC apparently believes that a more accurate figure is 10% increase year by year.
Relocation costs: EDA (and others) to the rescue!
“The East Devon Alliance campaign group has long argued that the relocation project has had an air of “secrecy” surrounding it and has questioned why the council’s financial case has “never been fully revealed”.
Now, the group has welcomed the decision for reports into the “relocation financial model calculations and assumptions” to be made public: An internal report into the relocation figures by Andrew Ellins, audit manager of the South West Audit Partnership, and by external auditors Grant Thornton, will be made available to members of the council’s Overview and Scrutiny and Audit and Governance committees ahead of their joint meeting to discuss the findings on March 5.
… [EDA member] Mr [Tony] Green welcomed the forthcoming publication of the reports but criticised the time it’s taken for the financial case behind the controversial project to be scrutinised and revealed.
“There’s been a whole lot of secrecy surrounding the figures and a lot of suspicion about the move,” he said. I would have welcomed a detailed report a couple of years ago before the decision was taken to move. It’s extraordinary that it’s been left until the eleventh hour for auditors to look at the data in detail.
There was definitely a feeling at the meeting that the committee were waking up to the sheer scale of what could go wrong, and there was a genuine effort to get to the bottom of figures they had previously taken on trust.”
At the meeting, former chairman of Sidmouth Chamber of Commerce, Richard Eley, questioned the council’s annual energy consumption prediction of around eight per cent increase a year. Mr Green added that the estimation was “ridiculous” and annual costs would be more like a two – four per cent increase.”
PS: Just because we’re divorced it doesn’t mean we don’t still love ’em!
Knowle relocation energy costs ..a sensitive matter for EDDC, it seems.
There’s a curious continued reluctance of the relocation Team to fully answer SOS Chair Richard Thurlow’s Freedom of Information request on the matter. Details here: http://saveoursidmouth.com/2015/01/13/energy-costs-for-relocation-disclosure-of-information-still-refused/
Overview and Scrutiny Committee, 14 January 2015 at 10 am Knowle
Snippets:
“If high priority schemes wish to be advanced by members, such as Exmouth Town Hall refurbishment, then consideration could be given to the financial position of not utilising NHB monies to reduce loan repayments for the Exmouth Regeneration schemes and to use this funding on such projects but this will have revenue implications in borrowing costs.”
Our translation: We have spent the relocation money. If you want more then you will have to think about taking it from elsewhere, such as the New Homes Bonus, but if you do, there will be less money for the Exmouth regeneration scheme currently taking that money. (Elsewhere in the document it warns not to get too reliant on doing this as the Government might move the goalposts). Cost neutral, eh?
And it appears that “Implement provisions of Transparency Code legislation” responsibility goes to EDDC employee Terry Wilson to whom we offer our sincere condolences.
http://new.eastdevon.gov.uk/media/668309/140115-os-agenda-budget-combined.pdf
South West Audit Partnership: recent FOI requests
Including how councillors can serve on its board and remain neutral and minutes of Board Meetings, though SWAP seem unable to understand quite how whatdotheyknow works:
https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/body/swap
SWAP are the internal auditors to EDDC and South Somerset councils and (see below) their EDDC auditor has said that he has not examined EDDC relocation figures “in depth”.
“The principle interest in a report is its probity”.
This point was made very firmly by Deputy Chair Cllr Bowden, at this afternoon’s Audit and Governance (A&G) Committee meeting at Knowle.
Councillors and the public will naturally bear this in mind when the two independent audits, called for by A&G today, arrive in quick succession. The Committee was assured by EDDC officer Simon Davey, that both reports would be available by mid- to late-February 2015, to give time for a thorough reading before the next A&G meeting in March. They are long overdue!
Individual councillors, and of course Save Our Sidmouth (SOS), have made repeated requests for independent audits over the past two years.Not until 17 December 2014, and long after the political decision to move had been approved by themselves, did the Full Council, prompted by Cllr Graham Troman, vote to ask for a thorough investigation of the figures behind the relocation project.
Today, partly in response to questions from Richard Eley of SOS, and Tony Green of|East Devon Alliance, it was formally requested through the Chair, Cllr Ken Potter, that the the reports must be in writing, and that most of the content should be in Part A…i.e. in the public domain.
Internal auditor, Andrew Ellins,of South West Audit Partnership (SWAP) acknowledged that until now his work had depended more “on reliance than in-depth delving ” into the actual figures given by the relocation team. “If the figures are not accurate, then I have been hoodwinked”, he said. He appealed to members of the public to send him any information about possible errors in the Council’s facts and figures, that they would like him to report on.
External auditors, Grant Thornton, also promised to take a rigorous look at the Council’s calculations including the energy savings claimed by Richard Cohen to justify the move from the Knowle . Richard Eley had already expressed his incredulity at the “maverick and pessimistic” predictions of the Deputy CEO.
Several councillors expressed their awareness of the massive public concern over relocation, and Chair, Cllr Ken Potter declared, “This committee is anxious to get to the detail”. The business plan for relocation, and the soundness of the assumptions driving it, might at long last be thoroughly examined. We shall see.
You have £700,000 to spend …
Do you:
(a) put more resources into delivering your local plan as quickly as possible?
or
(b) spend it all on the pre-planning of an abortive HQ move to Skypark (then hurriedly change your mind, needing even more money for your vanity project)?
Had it been (a) the district would have been safeguarded from inappropriate development such as the 900 houses planned for Clyst St Mary (see below).
It is coming up for a year since the Local Plan was inspected. At that time the Inspector envisaged a re-hearing in October 2014. The last time EDDC communicated with him was in that month when they told him they had no idea how long their re- working would take.
In meetings since then we have had the same message: now that EDDC has decided to join forces with Exeter and Teignbridge (which was not a requirement from the Inspector) it will all take so much longer. Until at least after local elections in May 2015. Convenient for developers.
800 people will work at new Ipswich £11m HQ
And we get around 300 for the same price!
http://www.eadt.co.uk/news/politics_2_480/ipswich_first_staff_move_into_new_11m_council_hq_1_1495978
What £10 million buys you these days
If it costs £10 m to improve the entrance of Exeter St David’s railway station, how can it cost EDDC the same amount to build a new HQ in Honiton and refurbish Exmouth Town Hall?
Exmouth Journal: Swire takes two pages to say all he does is shake hands and check his Twitter feed whilst Wright questions EDDC HQ “scandalous plans” on Letters page
Below is a direct quotation from two pages of (free publicity) for Hugo Swire in this week’s Exmouth Journal. Hard to know why the newspaper published his long and rambling article as it had nothing to say about Exmouth or East Devon but had LOTS and LOTS to say about his globetrotting!
Compare the two glowing pages on Swire’s international profile to the succinct and straightforward letter from Independent Parliamentary candidate Claire Wright in the same newspaper on Knowle relocation:
We know which we prefer!
East Devon Watch 