The building costs (£850,000) did not include VAT so add another £150,000 plus (assuming most work done at 17.5% and not the current 20%)
So it isn’t £850,000 – it’s a £1 million olus building that’s being demolished.
Now, bearing in mind how small it is – can you see the Skypark HQ being built for a TOTAL cost of £4m including land costs and planning costs?
http://www.westerndailypress.co.uk/Lib-Dems-warn-sale-council-s-HQ/story-21285820-detail/story.html
Or is it, as we have mentioned before “scorched earth”?
From Wikipedia:
“A scorched earth policy is a military strategy which involves destroying anything that might be useful to the enemy while advancing through or withdrawing from an area. It is a military strategy where all of the assets that are used or can be used by the enemy are targeted, such as food sources, transportation, communications, industrial resources, and even the people in the area.”
A couple of snippets to make you grimace, laugh or cry – or possible all three:
The mechanisms for maintaining and reviewing the effectiveness of the system of internal control throughout the year include.
Cabinet is responsible for considering overall financial and performance management and receives comprehensive budget monitoring reports on a monthly basis and council service performance reports.
Overview & Scrutiny Committee holds the Cabinet Committee to account.
Overview and Scrutiny hold the Cabinet to account – pull the other one. Anyone remember the East Devon Business Forum Business Task and Finish Group … Overview and Scrutiny? Happily toothless tiger.
Page 68
Risk: [That] Council services are not delivered where and how customers need them . Services do not consult effectively to ensure service delivery meets customer demand and the expectations of all our communities that we will deliver services in line with the Equality Act 2010.
This risk has been removed as it falls under other risks within the register and forms part of our Open for Business and flexible working projects.
Anyone been consulted about the move to Skypark and its effect on those people who will not be able to get there. Hubs? What happens if you can’t get to a “hub” on the day or time that it comes to your nearest town or village (and nearest towns and villages are NOT the same as accessible personally or by public transport).
Go to the Planning tab on the EDDC website (eastdevon.gov.uk) and type 14/0197 in the search box.
When that comes up, click on the Documents tab.
Then click on the Associated Comments link and then to the tab marked Consultees Comments.
It is AMAZING how EDDC can jump to it when it tries: erudite comments from lical councillors, many comments from the Contaminated Land Officer ( we have one?), the tree officer, environmental health – reams of comments.
And Exeter airport suddenly finds itself worried about night-time floodlighting for the building …..
Wonder how this might have panned out if EDDC were not planning to move there.
And have a look what Highways says: confirming no chance of diverting the number 4 bus but mentioning that it will only be a 24 minute walk each way from the new railway station.
Get those walking boots and hiking sticks ready on cold winter days!
http://www.devon24.co.uk/news/firm_appointed_to_market_knowle_1_3640336
”
Cllr Ray Bloxham said a piece of work is underway ‘to see what service delivery we can produce in each of our towns and what kind of facilities would be needed to do that’.
He added: “The important thing is members of the public who want to engage with the district council in some way can do it in the towns where they live rather than coming to our offices.”
Cllr Andrew Moulding questioned how many residents in East Devon visit Knowle, adding: “Unless there’s a major planning application people are concerned about, people would not necessarily need to communicate by actually going along and visiting the headquarters of the council.”
He said that an ambition of ‘transforming the council’ could be fulfilled ‘as long as we can have an office that’s modern, used better by our staff and indeed we can communicate better from those premises with the people that we serve’.
Members agreed a further £203,000 for 2014/15 – bringing the total pre-contract cost to £705,000.”
Currently planning to build in Seaton and rumoured to be interested in Knowle site:
http://www.theconstructionindex.co.uk/news/view/record-new-planning-consents–for-mccarthy-and-stone
Planning application 14/0197/MFUL for a 5634 sq m parcel distribution centre including 130 car parking spaces,120 light goods vehicles/public carrier vehicles spaces and 16 heavy goods vehicle spaces
Officers were very unhappy at this development and from the link to the letter below seem to be taking the developer, St Modwyn, to task: lights too bright, not enough trees to screen the facility….
So, EDDC HQ surrounded by: an ambulance control centre, an energy plant, planes landing at the airport all day and now a parcel delivery centre. Not quite like sitting in the Knowle arboretum in your lunch break!
Still, if they need an ambulance or want to collect a parcel or go away for a weekend break it will be very useful – and probably quite warm!
Oh, and on page 5 note the developer’s point that they have had no other takers for the site in the last 4 years …..
Now, remind us, why did EDDC choose Skypark? Oh yes, they flogged the Honiton site off to a supermarket and officers weren’t asked if they wanted to stay at Knowle!
As revealed by Cllr David Cox at last night’s Cabinet meeting, Savills has been selected as marketing agent for the current EDDC HQ site at Knowle. It is strongly rumoured that McCarthy and Stone have shown potential interest . Can anyone confirm this?
In this period of rebellion in the ballot box, the incumbent East Devon Member of Parliament may be expecting to have a battle on his hands at the next election, less than twelve months’ from now (May 2015). As signalled in our earlier post, one very popular, Independent, County and District Councillor, a signatory of the EDA Charter, has today declared her intention to stand against him, and others may of course follow ( We’ll keep you informed). This was how Councillor Roger Giles, the long-standing and much respected District Councillor for Ottery St Mary, introduced her to the assembly in Sidmouth:
“A very warm welcome to everyone. Welcome to the Dissenters’ Room, which was provided by Annie Leigh Browne. Annie Leigh Bowne is a local heroine who not only gave Sidmouth the Byes and the Cottage Hospital, but was also a leading suffragist who successfully led the national campaign for women`s representation in local government, which was achieved in 1907.
A very appropriate location for the launch of Claire`s parliamentary campaign!
Many of you will know of all the fantastic work that Claire has done whilst she has been an East Devon District Councillor. She has been a beacon in the cause of openness and transparency and fairness at EDDC – often in the face of animosity and hostility from conservative party councillors.
One of her great successes was to expose the undue influence of East Devon Business Forum members on EDDC`s planning policies, and also the undue influence in their own members` planning applications. The Chairman of EDBF was former Councillor Graham Brown.
When Claire raised this matter at the EDDC meeting on 25 July 2012, she was accused by senior Conservative Councillors of:
“impugning integrity”; of engaging in “speculation, misinformation and
innuendo”; “debating through the media”; and making “scurrilous”
allegations.
There never has been an apology. Not even after the Daily Telegraph exposure of March 2013.
Claire has been amazingly energetic and persistent. Just look at some of the things she has done:
* Successfully campaigned to retain maternity services at Honiton Hospital
* Provided the first play park at West Hill
* Pressed for better protection for trees
* Fought against the Government relaxation of planning policy (NPPF)
* Vigorously opposed unnecessary and damaging levels of development on
greenfield sites in East Devon
* Got EDDC to allow recording of its meetings
* Pressed for the creation of a cycleway from Feniton to Ottery to Tipton to
Sidmouth on the disused railway line
* Regularly engaged with and sought the views of people, young and old
* Communicated extensively with electorate by various means, including the
extensive use of her excellent blog
* Opposed planned cuts to local services, and is currently fighting to save
Ottery`s youth centre, childrens centre, and library
* Pressed for openness and transparency in planning at EDDC, demanding
that planning committee members reveal if they have been lobbied
* Fought EDDC`s vanity project to relocate its offices at a cost of millions
of pounds of taxpayers money at a time when EDDC is slashing the
services it provides to the public
That is an amazing level of energy and determination.
Claire`s work was recognised by the electorate of the Ottery Rural ward in the Devon County Council elections of May 2013. She obtained 74% of the vote. She got the biggest vote; the biggest share of the vote; and the biggest majority of any councillor in the South West.
We know what you have done Claire – and we thank you for it.
And we are delighted to come here today to endorse your campaign to be the next Member of Parliament for East Devon.
Ladies and gentlemen I give you Claire Wright – our next MP.”
More comment, with photographs of today’s campaign launch at http://susiebond.wordpress.com/2014/06/03/cllr-claire-wright-launches-her-campaign-for-a-seat-at-westminster/
Well, maybe not quite all? This, and other highlights of the Cabinet agenda, are listed at http://saveoursidmouth.com/2014/05/29/latest-knowle-relocation-update-by-deputy-chief-executive/
In response to the post below where EDDC is trying to keep information secret by claiming that a consultant was “seconded” to EDDC so his information should be secret (although his report was written under his employer’s name and he continued to be paid by said employer) even though the Information Commissioner has said that it should be published a correspondent writes:
It does make one angry that EDDC engage external private “consultants” without transparency stating that such vested interest is somehow considered in-house. Some senior officers are so partisan they seem to believe they and their “stakeholders” friends have a political mandate to operate behind closed doors on behalf of the electorate. Some like the EDDC Economic Development Manager and his EDBF developer chums seem to think the public were voting for them. They fail to appreciate such insider trading with private enterprise is highly suspect and lacks democratic accountability and responsibility. We unfortunately live in the “Age of Shopping” but all this quick-buck culture of privatising and selling-off of the public assets which our more civilised grandparents generation established after two world wars is deeply disturbing.
Following a Freedom of Information request in November 2012 for the full minutes of various ‘relocation working parties’ on Knowle and for the full, unredacted reports from the Project Manager, Sidmouth resident Jeremy Woodward was told by EDDC officials that if he wanted these publishing, he would have to go to the Information Commissioner – which is what he duly did. And last month, they ordered EDDC to release the full reports on the plans to relocate from Knowle
See: http://www.claire-wright.org/index.php/post/office_relocation_freedom_of_information_battle
EDDC have now appealed, and the case (number EA/2014/0072) is now before an Information Rights Tribunal – and will probably be heard in early August.
See: https://www.justice.gov.uk/downloads/tribunals/information-rights/current-cases/register-cases.pdf
EDDC have meanwhile submitted further documentation – and they are absolutely determined that the reports on the relocation project should not be published.
In the original ‘decision notice’ where the Information Commissioner tells EDDC to publish the reports, they make it clear that the Project Manager of the firm appointed as consultants produced documentation for EDDC as a third party – and being from an outside consultancy, Davis Langdon, they should be made available to the public. EDDC will be making the case that the Project Manager was producing material which is commercially confidential and that he worked as an ‘insider’ – so his reports should be treated in the same way at the minutes of the ‘relocation working parties’, which the Information Commissioner has said should not be published.
See: http://ico.org.uk/~/media/documents/decisionnotices/2014/fs_50498100.pdf
In the meantime, there have been new, separate Freedom of Information requests made for the full minutes of these working parties – now that EDDC, a year and a half on since the original request, have clearly made the decision to leave Knowle and relocate to Skypark.
See: http://futuresforumvgs.blogspot.co.uk/2014/04/knowle-relocation-project-further-foi.html
With this Tribunal, together with the further delays over Rights of Way and the Village Green application at Knowle, EDDC will have their hands full as they try to prevent anything from derailing their ‘relocation project’.
East Devon Watch 