Now what does St Modwen (owner of the site) know that we din’t know?
Category Archives: Skypark
Relocation for less than £4 million my a**e!
EDDC has said that relocating its HQ from Knowle to Skypark will involve a total cost of less than £4 million. Remember that any income from the sake of Knowle and Manstone Depot should not be offset against the total cost as the income from that asset sale should benefit the whole of the EDDC community, not just a few councillors and officers who will site themselves nearer to Exeter than any other town in East Devon except Cranbrook..
Here are some recent costs for new council HQ some of which sold off their old HQ:
£11 million:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-26674095
£7 million:
http://www.warwickdc.gov.uk/news/article/17/warwick_district_council_is_on_the_move
£10.5 million
http://www.kidderminstershuttle.co.uk/news/9956172.New___10_5m_Wyre_Forest_District_Council_HQ_to_open_its_doors/
£9.7 million:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-dorset-23288032
Heritage Lottery Fund says parks at risk
http://www.hlf.org.uk/news/Pages/StateUKParks.aspx#.U60xwOe9Kf0
Well, we know our council isn’t interested in them (except as housing or supermarket land) as they are trading in their beautiful working environment (so good for mental and physical health) for an HQ between an airport runway, power generatingfacility, call centre and a parcel depot!
East Devon Business Centre: correction – it’s a £1 m building being demolished, not £850,000!
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?
Why the ink must dry quickly on Skypark
In the roughly six weeks before a general election local authorities should not take any actions that might affect the outcome of such elections, such as signing contracts for controversial projects.
The next general election and local elections will be on 7 May 2015. This means that controversial activity should cease by 26 March 2015.
One can see why the Skypark issue is being railroaded and kept so secret. The ink must be dry on the purchase of the site by the end of March next year. Especially if the European Election results in 2014 are replicated in East Devon as, if they are, the Conservatives will lose their overall majority and will be at the mercy of Independents, Greens and UKIP.
Here is the political guidance which was issued for 2014 elections.
http://www.parliament.uk/Templates/BriefingPapers/Pages/BPPdfDownload.aspx?bp-id=SN05262
Exeter Airport “a sleeping giant”
Oh dear – watch out Skypark, Cranbrook and Ottery and everywhere inbetween:
Nuggets from Audit and Governance Committee agenda
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).
Matters of financial high risk
In response to our recent post* on the difficulties surrounding the Honiton Beehive project, an EDA member has provided the following information, and some comments.
‘http://www.eastdevon.gov.uk/combined_agenda_141113.pdf (page 72)
An extract from the Audit & Governance Committee agenda of 14th November 2013 summarizes progress on The Beehive community centre at Honiton[1]. The advice was that, “surface water drainage provision would be needed to a higher standard than originally anticipated to reflect potential flooding issues, especially to neighbouring residential properties.”
“Honiton Town Council had not envisaged such costs in its original budgeting. EDDC officers from Property, Planning and Building Control met with HTC to assess the issue and determine a workable resolution. The various drainage scenarios and history of the issue were considered. The outcome was that, for the project build to proceed to a point where it could be signed off, a drainage infrastructure investment would be needed over and above the capacity of the existing fund. Therefore to cover the necessary works EDDC agreed by urgent verbal report to 12 June 2013 Cabinet (Part B) to fund a sum of up to 90% of a ceiling of £130,000. HTC will be expected to meet 10% of costs.”
“The reason for this urgency was that works would have to stop on the site construction and additional costs would be incurred by delay to contract. Without agreement to the provision of suitable drainage the building would not be signed off by Building Control and the planning condition not discharged. The building would therefore be uninsurable.”
_____________________________________________________________________________
Note: 90% of the £130,000 bill was picked up by EDDC ratepayers, only 10% by Honiton Town Council. If the Beehive project is deemed high risk, surely Skypark must be off the scale?
Does this inspire you with confidence for the future? For example, EDDC Councillors want the public to trust them with sale of The Knowle; plus sale of Manstone Depot; plus sale of East Devon Business Centre; plus sale of the SITA site at Honiton; ALL of these properties plus borrowing up to £4.8million, in order to construct one building, namely their new premises at Skypark? They have already spent or committed over £700,000 of OUR MONEY. To coin a phrase from the successful Feniton campaigners, “When is enough, enough?”
*http://eastdevonalliance.org/2014/06/16/if-honiton-town-council-is-deemed-a-financial-high-risk-for-beehive-what-will-skypark-do-to-eddc/
Skypark Parcel Depot: amazing how EDDC can get its act together when it tries!
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!
If Honiton Town Council is deemed a financial high risk for Beehive what will Skypark do to EDDC?
“The Council had minimal free reserves at the start of the project and therefore should have risk assessed the implications of a cost overrun on the project and ensured that sufficient resources could be put in place so as not to jeopardise existing Council services in that event.“
The cost of “satellite” hubs if EDDC relocates?
It seems no-one thought to cost how much will be spent on maintaining satellite hubs if EDDC relocates.
Back of an envelope:
One half day, 50 weeks a year renting space in the 8 towns of East Devon – say to keep visits to a minimum 2 hours per week. A low cost for renting would be about £15 per hour. Cost £78,000
2 people visiting each time (1 officer cannot do everything surely) and each officer claims £10 per trip petrol, subsistence, etc. £2,000
Total minimum £80,000 per year.
Anyone like to put their own costings forward – councillors?
Skypark: oh dear, poor EDDC workers ….. get those earplugs and sunglasses ready!
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!
The shape of things to come?
…..Labour victory in Hammersmith and Fulham has raised questions over the future of Terry Farrell’s £8billion masterplan for Earls Court
Speaking to the BBC after the local elections, Labour Leader of Hammersmith and Fulham Stephen Cowan, said that some planned developments in the area would now be scrapped – although he wouldn’t reveal which ones.
The first phase of the Earls Court scheme designed by Kohn Pedersen Fox (KPF), Terry Farrell Architects and Pilbrow & Partners, had been given planning permission back in April 2014 and includes the demolition of two estates and the Earls Court Exhibition Centre.
Prior to the election Labour councillors had been in discussion with local residents against the demolition of the surrounding estates and had issued a manifesto pledging to take immediate measures to protect homes. .….
EDDC – Knowle relocation secrecy – important update
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’.
Science Park gets £1m grant for “infrastructure”
Exeter Science Park is close to the Skypark development and also part of the “East Devon Growth Point” as is Skypark. Here is an article on progress of the site about progress so far and how proud they are to have recieved a £1m grant to provide “infrastructure” to the site which seems to mean that it is for faster broadband facilities.
and here is an interesting paragraph in that article:
Exeter Science Park is part of the £2 billion Exeter and East Devon Growth Point development programme, where a number of strategic projects are set to deliver over 20,000 new homes and over 25,000 jobs by 2026.
A date for your 2026 diary perhaps. And where will all the homes be by then? Will any of them have been “affordable”?
Somehow you know when something is a puff job rather than a fact and here the giveaway is that it is not boasting of tenants to come but of having received a £1 million grant.
Which begs the question: how much will a similar connection to Skypark cost – bearing in mind all the work that officers are going to do out of their offices at “touch down” places in the area because residents cannot get to Skypark with any ease (unless they live in Exeter or Cranbrook).
Is this yet another cost that residents will have to bear if no grant is forthcoming?
And we’ve saved the best till last! How EDDC is going to “transform” itself when (if?) it moves to Skypark!
[square brackets and BOLD are our comments]
Transforming the council
Relocation is a central part of our plans to transform this Council into an organisation that meets the needs of its residents and businesses in an accessible, cost effective and joined up way [oh, no, the dreaded jargon joined up!]. So that we can keep abreast of customer demand and rising customer expectations, East Devon is working hard to transform and modernise the way staff go about their work and the ways in which customers can do business with the council. Key to these new ways of working are a number of projects which include the following:
Mobile device policy rollout – this will ensure that officers will have the right IT equipment to allow them to work from home, flexibly (between home and office) or in a mobile way. [Er, does this mean an iPad for every worker perhaps and no-one ever needing to actually work at Skypark?]
Creating a fully ICT equipped mobile workforce will help us improve efficiency and customer service.
Open for business – web channel – this project will see us totally revamp our website using the principles already established by the successful gov.uk website. As well as fresh content which is easier to find, this project will deliver 230 additional on-line services for our customers [230 more online services – can you imagine it – well, if you don’t have a computer you can’t]. We know from the feedback in from our Viewpoint Survey that 72% of our customers are satisfied with our services [anyone see the survey? It would be ripped to shreds by any professional survey organisation!] but we want to improve this figure by offering our services where and when our customers want them [er, I think you will find they want them in Sidmouth, or possibly Honiton but certainly not Skypark!].
In addition to this East Devon is currently reviewing facilities across the district to understand what existing space we can use for mobile officers to ‘touch down’ across the district so that they will not need to make unnecessary journeys back to the office [a new phrase! we are not having “hubs” any more – they are “touch downs”!]. We are also drawing up proposals to firm up what service provision will be available for customers across the district following relocation [translation: we have no idea what we are going to do].
Public and stakeholder engagement and consultation
[Isn’t this interesting: the headline shows that EDDC doesn’t consider the public to be stakeholders!]
We will be carrying out consultation with our equality partners and from a Best Value perspective to help us understand what service provision customers, key stakeholders and partners would like to see around the district following relocation. [Anyone like to try to translate what seems to be like meaningless jargon again?]
Communication
We continue to update staff on progress and following this report further staff sessions will be arranged. Additionally, we continue to communicate externally and our communications strategy is constantly under review. The stakeholder meetings, East Devon Extras and engagement with all media channels regarding office accommodation have been helpful in getting our messages out there. These will continue. [groan, groan: sounds like the staff are going to be brainwashed and the media is going to continue to be blasted with pro-move propaganda]
Oh, naughty Knowle Residents Association – you have upset EDDC!
Cabinet agenda HERE
Extract from page 55:
Town and Village Green (TVG)
Using the vehicle of a TVG application, a group of objectors, under the banner of Knowle Residents Association (KRA), are attempting to inhibit EDDC’s ability to develop part of the areas of Knowle designated within the draft Local Plan for residential use.
A TVG application was made after the rejection of the Knowle outline planning application in 2013. Should the application be wholly successful it would prevent development of Knowle outside the immediate boundary of the current offices. Evidence was submitted by both parties to Devon County Council as the determining authority and EDDC has been pressing for a resolution since the autumn. A one day inquiry was held in the Council Chamber on 10 April 2014 for a barrister appointed by Devon County Council to hear legal argument.
Whilst prospective developers can accommodate a degree of risk when calculating a value to offer for a development (Judicial Review for example) a TVG is a potentially draconian restriction. The Knowle Residents’ Association original application included Knowle car parks, depot and the external space around the offices including the terrace : sites identified by EDDC for residential development in the Draft Local Plan.
The KRA has subsequently retreated from trying to designate the Knowle Depot site but continues through the remainder of its TVG application to try and prevent development of the upper carparks and immediate surrounds of the office buildings.
At the time of writing this report, we await the inspector’s report to County on his view of the TVG application. Pending clarity on the next steps we have paused the marketing exercise for Knowle and Manstone. The TVG application has added time and cost to the Council’s relocation planning.
So what happens if an incident occurs at an EDDC “hub” when they move to Skypark?
£705,568 – the minimum spent or pledged so far on the move to Skypark (according to our council’s own figures)
Cabinet Agenda 4 June 2014
Click to access cabinet_040614__-public_version.pdf
Page 53
4.
To approve next phase of project funding.
A further £203,882 is projected to be required for the remainder of 2014/15 bringing total project development cost to £705,568
Skypark 1987!
Interesting to read what was planned for Skypark in 1987:
http://www.emeraldinsight.com/journals.htm?articleid=1662000
So far we have a gas-fired power station for district heating, and an ambulance service HQ … oh, and an EDDC HQ.
Lovely.
East Devon Watch 