Author Archives: Peter Cleasby

About Peter Cleasby

Current interests. I’m: •an active Exeter Green Party member, •an openness campaigner •a contributing editor at Exeter Observer •a volunteer watchkeeper at the National Coastwatch Institution’s Exmouth station, •a blogger, mostly on Exeter, environment, society and public policy, and Formerly: •Chairman, Plunkett Foundation •Vice-Chairman, CPRE Devon (Campaign to Protect Rural England)o •member, CPRE national Policy Committee •board member, Community Council of Devon (now Devon Communities Together) •board member, ACRE (Action with Communities in Rural England); •Deputy Director at Defra, MAFF, Department of Social Security (and other types of civil servant) •Standards Committee member at Thames Valley Police Authority •secretary of a village community association when we lived in Bucks.

County declares war on City

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Devon County Council is prepared to let Exeter’s residents choke on traffic fumes so that rural commuters can stay in their cars.

It’s not unusual in these straitened times for a local authority to give with one hand and take away with the other.  How else can they balance their budgets without losing all political support?  Rather more eyebrow-raising is when a county council plans to reduce private car journeys by the residents of its principal city and county town with the aim of allowing the freed-up road space in the city to be occupied by commuters driving in from the surrounding towns and rural areas.

This astonishing proposal is set out the latest Exeter Transport Strategy, produced by Devon County Council (DCC) as the highways and transport authority covering Exeter, and which is currently out for consultation.  Paragraph 1.46 states that there will be a target of 50% of all trips within the city being made on foot or by bike, an excellent aim which should reduce pollution from motor vehicles, diminish congestion and traffic noise, and generally make the city a better place to live.

So far so good.  But then we read paragraph 1.47, which needs to be quoted in full:

“This [the target] represents the most achievable way of freeing up capacity to facilitate the increase of car-based inward commuters from outside the city and complements the Sport England Local Delivery Pilot and Exeter’s aspiration to become the most active city in the country.”  (My emphasis).

This is either a mistake which slipped through the editing process, or a test to see if anyone actually reads the small print, or one of the most cynical pieces of planning policy I have ever come across.  I favour the third interpretation, and this is why.

DCC is a Tory-led council: 42 out of 60 seats, but only 2 of the 9 Exeter seats.  The ruling group is by no means made up solely of slavish adherents to such flagship policies as “Austerity” and “Local Government Spending Cuts”.  No, it is not Mrs May, Conservative Central Office and the Ministry of Housing & Everything Else that the councillors fear.  Instead it is their constituents in rural Devon who regard it as their divine right to get into their large vehicles – so essential for country life – and drive into the middle of Exeter for business, shopping or pleasure.  They are particularly vociferous about the length of time it takes to pass through the Exeter suburbs, which are cluttered up with cars and buses being used by those pesky people who actually live in the city, not to mention all those pedestrians who slow up traffic by wanting to cross the road.  So what better move for DCC than to make life easier for their constituents by pushing the townies off the roads so as to let their chums race around the city adding to our mortality rates by polluting our local air and keeping our roads unsafe?

Exeter City Council is largely powerless on these matters.  Its Chief Executive has just presented an inspiring vision of what the city could look like in 20 years, given the right policies, strong community engagement in realising it, and the political will [1].  What DCC want to do is diametrically opposed to this.  It’s not an exaggeration to say that Devon County Council has declared war on its own county town.

NOTE:

[1]  I shall be blogging on the CE’s vision in A Green in Exeter in the next few days.

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What price green space?

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Exeter City Council is about to take a decision that will define its soul

The modern story of the Clifton Hill green space began in March 2018 when snow damaged the Clifton Hill Sports Centre.  In July 2018 I asked a series of questions in a blog post, questions which have never been satisfactorily answered despite the efforts of the two campaign groups [1].  Over the next month, the future of this green space will in all likelihood be rubber-stamped by councillors of the ruling Labour group in a series of meetings. 

The process starts with a special meeting of the Place Scrutiny Committee on 31 January [2], which is the first occasion the Clifton Hill issue has been the subject of a report to a scrutiny committee.  These committees make recommendations to the Council’s Executive, which meets on 12 February before sending its decisions on for ratification by the full Council on 26 February.  By prior arrangement, members of the public may ask questions at scrutiny committees, but not at the Executive nor at full Council.

The report to councillors is stark.  The key points in its 16 pages are:

  • The Council needs funds to pay for the £3m improvements to other leisure facilities it has already promised to deliver.
  • Up to £5.5m is required to repair the Riverside Swimming Pool and Leisure Centre, as more defects in the – uninsured – building are discovered.
  • Nearly £1m will be spent on repairs to the Pyramids Swimming Pool.
  • The sale of the whole Clifton Hill site for a mixed housing development will generate about £9m.
  • The Council has very little room for manoeuvre in its forward capital programme (though it is not spelt out, in large measure because the St Sidwell’s Point and bus station development has pre-empted so much capital).

Much is included about residents’ concerns over the loss of the green space.  The recommended response is to retain 10% of the site as green space.  This is less a sop to local opinion as a hoped-for means of buying off opposition when planning permission is sought for the new housing: as the report states, “The risk of public opposition to development of this site will be addressed in the normal way through the statutory planning process. The recommendation to remove a part of the site from the sale to ensure it remains as an informal public green space is a significant mitigation factor to public opposition”.  Ho hum.

More housing is needed, of course.  But it seems unlikely that the “mixed” housing development will deliver the quantity of social, or even so-called affordable, accommodation that could be provided.  Clifton Hill itself being fairly posh, we are likely to get upmarket private housing, with a token (if that) amount for social rent.  The City Council’s own housing development company seems unlikely to be able to get in on the act because of the imperative of selling the site on the open market.

As is required, the report sets out alternative options, but only to dismiss them:

  • Developing part of the site and retaining more as green space will not generate sufficient capital receipts to pay all the bills.
  • Permanently closing Riverside, and so saving the repair costs, does not fit with the Council’s – as yet non-existent – strategy for leisure facilities, and a firm of consultants advised that a facility was needed at or near the present Riverside site.
  • Not retaining 10% of the site as green space will not provide the envisaged Valium for local opposition.

So, the vortex into which Council decision-making has fallen is now destroying any scope for action which does not feed the money machine. 

Need things have come to this?  How is a Labour-run council, whose current party strapline is “For the many, not the few”, nodding through plans to sell publicly-owned green space for private use?  Part of the answer lies, of course, with central government and Tory austerity, which is still with us (and people’s living standards can only be diminished further if Brexit goes ahead).  The rest lies with Labour Exeter itself which has blindly bought into a prospectus for economic growth based on high-value industries, which leave all too many people riding round on bikes delivering pizzas for a living. The growth scenario – and it is a scenario – requires public funding to make the city look “good”, which translates into ill-thought out vanity capital projects like St Sidwell’s Point.  Basic maintenance on keeping existing public assets in working condition has been set aside.

When did any political party actually ask us in an election whether we wanted economic growth? When did anyone spell out the downsides to a growth strategy, rather than take it as given that growth is a good? Because of the city leadership’s growth obsession, all policy decisions point in one direction. The voices of residents are heard only when it is convenient.

Not so many years ago, Exeter had a laudable ambition to be a “Green City”.  Now we face a future in which green space, and all the benefits associated with it, is destroyed for short-term expediency.  As is the humanity in our local government

NOTES:

[1]  See Save Clifton Hill Green Space at https://www.facebook.com/groups/207359149910641/ and Save Clifton Hill Sports Centre at https://www.facebook.com/savecliftonhillsportscentre/

[2]  The report to be discussed at the meeting is available via this link.

The will of the people

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Nothing to do with Brexit, but Exeter City Council has bowed to public opinion

In the upmarket Exeter district of St Leonard’s, the residents have been flexing their considerable collective muscle against a City Council proposal to sell off 130 sq metres of the Council-owned Bull Meadow, amounting to 1% of the park.  The aim of the sale is not to raise funds for our cash-strapped Council but to facilitate vehicle access to a planned redevelopment of 12 almshouses to provide 31 almshouses, 

Disposal of public land requires a Council to advertise its intention and invite representations.  207 replies and a petition of 327 signatures were received. 191 of the respondents objected to the proposed sale and only one respondent supported it [1]. 

At the Council’s Place Scrutiny Committee meeting on 17 January, councillors considered a report from the City Surveyor which nudged them in the direction of agreeing to the disposal.  Two of the three ward councillors addressed the committee stressing the extent of local opposition and arguing that alternative ways of providing the vehicular access had been identified.  Committee members looked a bit glum until it was pointed out that decisions on the scheme and the access would be taken by the Planning Committee, and all the Scrutiny Committee had to do was to decide its position on the principle of disposing of a piece of parkland.

This cheered everyone up no end, since – because there were alternative access routes available – they could simply support the will of the people without risking blocking a scheme for housing for low-income residents.  The Member Champion for Communities was particularly thrilled at being able to agree with community views.  Indeed, there were so many statements from councillors about respecting the views of residents that you might think the will of people will hereafter dominate Council decision-making.

Well, you might think that.  Sadly, not all decisions are quite so simple.  In this case:

  • The Scrutiny Committee’s decision is merely advisory; it is the Executive that will decide.
  • The alternative access arrangements depend wholly on the developer being willing to put them forward and on Planning Committee approving them.
  • Because the value from the sale would be small (£25,000), there is no real financial driver.
  • Decisions on the future of the nearby Clifton Hill Sports Centre site, which could involve disposing of public green space (a proposal that is already being hotly and eloquently contested by local residents), will be much less easy, however great the number of objections.  The site would be used for much-needed housing and the value of the sale to the Council would be substantial.

So the will of people should enjoy its moment in the sun – it’s unlikely to last.

NOTES

[1]  The other 15 objections were based on a misapprehension that the Council proposed to sell the whole park.

Quis custodiet .…..?

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Increasing dependence by public bodies on consultants raises questions about where the buck really stops.

Are you sitting comfortably?  Since January 2015 Exeter City Council has spent £9.4 million on services described as “Consultants Fees”.  Over half of this – £4.8 million – has gone on consultancy work related to the bus station site redevelopment [1] – even though we haven’t seen a new brick yet – but the Council buys in consultancy for a range of other services: the new housing development companies, work at the Museum and public relations advice all figure [2].

Consultants have their uses.  They offer most benefit in providing, on a short-term basis, skills and knowledge that the local authority doesn’t have, ideally transferring those skills to council staff during the project.  They are also used to make up shortfalls in permanent staff numbers, though this raises – or should raise – value for money questions.  Less laudably, big name consultancies can be engaged as a means of shifting blame from the council to its contractors for the inevitable cock-up or failure to meet deadlines or budgets, a point I return to later.

Consultants are not cheap.  When I freelanced some years ago, my daily rate varied between £400 and £600.  You wouldn’t get even a fresh-out-of-university junior consultant for twice that from any of the big generalist or strategy consulting firms, not least because they have expensive overheads, including partners’ profits at levels unimaginable in the public service.  Consultancy UK publish a useful overview of fees.  To be fair to Exeter City Council, they don’t use the Big Four for consultancy services and not all the fees are at eye-catching levels.  But it’s all a transfer of money from the public sector to private interests.

So do we get a Rolls-Royce – or, as the consultants would say, world-class – service for our money?   Always difficult to tell, because not all consultancy outputs for the Council are made public.  Occasionally, something erupts into public view, as when shortly after announcing that the bus station site redevelopment project would be further delayed because the construction tenders submitted well exceeded the budgetary advice provided, the Council abruptly dispensed with the services of one of the consultancy firms working on the project team.  Still, the firm received over £400,000 of public money for its contribution.

Then, less dramatic but no less problematic, there is the  business case for the city’s new leisure centre, now known as St Sidwell’s Point.  On the basis of a business case drawn up by consultants in secret during 2015 the Council resolved to go ahead with the project, despite the construction costs being underestimated.  The whole show collapsed in late 2017 when the developers for the private sector element of the site pulled out, followed in very rapid succession by the contractors eventually lined up to build the leisure centre and bus station.  The business case was then rewritten during 2018, by a different consultancy firm, incorporating several Council requirements that had not been identified in the first business case, including pricing stipulations, free swimming for children, creche facilities, staff employment conditions and free car parking.  In addition, the revised business case contained a competition analysis and a “latent demand for fitness” report.  Not surprisingly, the assumptions on operating profits were revised – downwards [3].

One conclusion to be drawn from this is that if the contractors had not pulled the plug in 2017 the Council would have gone ahead with the project on the basis of what we now know was a business case which failed to incorporate key user requirements.  The most basic project management text book will tell you that among the common causes of project failure is not getting the user requirements right.  This is often because users themselves don’t know, but it’s the job of the consultants managing the project to tease this information out from them.  So who would have been accountable for any failure arising from going ahead using the first business case?  The lawyers’ fees in sorting that one out would doubtless pay for several chief executives

There may have been other deficiencies in the first business case but because the Council refused my request to publish it even in a redacted form (a request upheld by the Information Commissioner) there was no independent review of the case [4].  Encouragingly, the Council have been a bit more open with the revised business case and published a redacted summary version of it.

And here we come to the crunch issue in this consultant-led world.  Why did no one spot the problems with the first business case?  As central government puts more pressure on local authorities while reducing their funding, councillors and senior officers lack either the experience or the time or both to second-guess the consultants.  The first business case was at least 250 pages long.  Such quality assurance as there is comes from within the project team, itself managed by a consultant so embedded into the Council’s structure that he was able to call the shots at my final meeting with Council officers to seek to settle my complaint to the Information Commissioner.

Now a bit of culture.  The Roman writer Juvenal is little read these days.  In his sixth Satire, written around 115 CE, he ridiculed the institution of marriage because of the way in which greed, selfishness and corruption in Roman society had debased it.  In recognising that moral behaviour cannot be upheld when those charged with upholding it are themselves corrupt, Juvenal comments – in a line probably better known to posterity than anything else he wrote – sed quis custodiet ipsos custodes?  In English, literally “but who guards the guards?”

It is an age-old question that occurs throughout the conduct of public business (though hopefully without the greed, selfishness and corruption).  Checks and balance are woven into our structures: some are often effective (Parliamentary select committees), others are usually more feeble (local authority scrutiny committees).  But the complexity of modern major projects is overwhelming the current processes.  If you pay a consultant not just to provide information and analysis but also options and a preferred way forward, and the work looks solid enough, what else do you do but accept it?  Consultants are experts at blinding non-experts with reams of tables and figures derived from “accepted” methodologies.  Councillors and officers, as already noted, can’t challenge from a level playing field.

So, quis custodiet ipsos consultores?

Not the external auditors, for sure, who are many cases one of the big audit firms whose real money comes from consultancy.  Their idea of a value-for-money study is checking to see whether the local authority followed the procedures correctly.

What about review by another consultancy?  Apart from the extra cost, there can be hidden influences.  Are the two firms competitors, in which case the reviewing firm has an interest in finding fault.  Or do they collaborate on projects, in which case the reviewing firm has an incentive in presenting their collaborator in the best possible light?

There is an approach which could work, and at low cost.  Central government runs a Gateway review system for major programmes and projects.  The system as I knew it was run by an arm of the Treasury, and it used a mix of external freelance consultants (often ex-civil servants) and serving civil servants with relevant experience borrowed from Departments for the duration of a one-week review (I was regularly one of these towards the end of my Whitehall career).  Essentially, major programmes and projects were required to call in a Gateway review team at various stages of the project, and the team ploughed through key documents and grilled project staff and stakeholders about progress.  The team then reported to the senior official in overall charge of the project, traffic-lighting progress as red, amber or green.  It was – and hopefully still is – a cheap and effective check on what was going on.  It would certainly have identified gaps such as the absence of user requirements.

For local government, the Local Government Association would be the obvious driver for a Gateway scheme, much as it manages the Corporate Peer Challenge scheme.  A mix of serving officers and genuinely independent freelance consultants would be the ideal resource.

There are doubtless other options.  But business-as-usual is looking increasingly high risk.

 

NOTES:

[1]  For those unfamiliar with the bus station site redevelopment proposals, see my blog post at  https://agreeninexeter.com/2016/04/28/off-the-buses/ which takes the story up to 2016.  The City Council website provides updates at https://exeter.gov.uk/people-and-communities/major-projects/st-sidwells-point/

[2]  Source:  Exeter City Council spending data available at https://exeter.gov.uk/council-and-democracy/council-information/council-data/council-spending/

[3]  The Council minutes and papers are at agenda item 11 at  http://committees.exeter.gov.uk/ieListDocuments.aspx?CId=608&MId=6167&Ver=4  This also includes the redacted business case referred to later on.

[4]  See https://agreeninexeter.com/2018/07/26/leisure-centre-business-case-stays-secret/

A bold way forward?

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Exeter City Council’s Vision for 2040 is more than just aspirational waffle.  It sets out some very clear commitments.

Let’s be clear.  A vision is a vision.  Those who have done time in corporate bodies will recall the business planning hierarchy, with the Vision on top, then Aims and Objectives (I could never tell the difference), then Strategic Plans, then Policies, then the Business Plans, then Operational or Delivery Plans, then individual Performance Plans, and the many variations on all these that existed.  One of the reasons I was happy to leave corporate life was to get away from writing Plans that had minimal chance of ever being implemented because someone, somewhere would move the goalposts.  So, really, a nice vague Vision is likely to be the most robust of the lot.

Exeter City Council’s new Emerging Vision for Exeter 2040 [1], hidden away inside the less visionary-sounding Our Strategy 2018-2021, is actually rather bold.  It states, sometimes precisely and other times less so, what it wants the city to be like in 20 years.  Because the Council is going to commit to this vision, or something very like it, we have to assume that it means what it says and that the Council’s actions will support its realisation.  We know it’s a vision, not a delivery plan, so its achievement will be subject to the usual caveats, such as availability of funding, relaxation of central government controls, no earthquakes political or otherwise, and (the catch-all excuse for the next 10 years) Brexit.  But meanwhile we can reasonably look to the Council to do two things.  First, to ensure that all the actions it does take – short term and long term – do actually advance achievement of the vision.  Second, and conversely, to ensure that none of its actions frustrates achievement of the vision.

I’m particularly looking forward to measuring words against deeds on these elements of the vision :

  • Exeter will be a model of strong local democracy. Communities will organise themselves [..]. Active, engaged citizens and communities will be empowered to create, share and use data to respond to shared problems and needs.  Can we all now expect the city council to revitalise its flagging democracy by leading a campaign for a fair voting system in English local government, setting up ward councils, bringing communities in at the beginning of proposals rather than the end, and making openness its default position
  • Every resident will have a home that is secure, affordable and healthy in a balanced and connected neighbourhood. Can we expect the end of homelessness and constraints on executive-priced market housing?
  • The impacts of growth will be managed and mitigated and communities will lead development. Can we expect the end of purpose-built student housing being concentrated in the central area against the expressed wishes of communities, and to the creation of public transport, educational and other infrastructure services that keep pace with housing and employment patterns?
  • Exeter will be a liveable city, with a thriving city centre. Can we expect the end of empty shops, congestion and too much land given over to car parks, and of air pollution?
  • Urban planning will protect and enhance Exeter’s exceptional natural and historic environment, safeguard its iconic landscape setting, and encourage high-quality contemporary design that complements and enhances the city’s heritage. Can we expect the end of characterless housing estates thrown up by volume builders, and an end to building on green spaces?  Can we expect the City Council to use joint planning arrangements to stop neighbouring authorities building on our surrounding hills?

Can we expect all this?  If the City Council is to keep faith with the rest of us, then of course we can.  Bring it on!

NOTES:

[1]  Available at https://exeter.gov.uk/council-and-democracy/council-information/corporate-plan-2018-21/ . The vision is on page 4 of the glossy version.  The text-only version is amusingly entitled “Our Strategy 2018-2012”.

The (city) centre cannot hold

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Exeter councillors’ unanimous decision to reject the application for the Moor Exchange retail park suggests they have not grasped the changes in the city’s retail  environment nor the significance of the eastward spread of housing.  

On Monday 13 March Exeter City Council’s Planning Committee unanimously disagreed with their officers’ recommendation to give outline planning permission to a revised version of the Moor Exchange retail park proposal, off Honiton Road well to the east of the historic city centre.  In a long and at times indigestible report officers recognised the downsides of the application but concluded that the advantages, particularly economic ones, outweighed the fact that the application did not strictly conform to the increasingly outdated 2012 Core Strategy which aims at “protecting” the historic city centre from edge of city competition.

In particular the report recognises that changes in shopping habits should be taken into consideration.  In a concluding statement it says:

“…it is perhaps arguable that a bigger [than the ‘city centre first’ policy] current issue is securing ‘bricks and mortar’ investment, with its consequent economic benefits, in the face of the relentless growth of online shopping. Whilst the development plan is largely silent on this matter, it is clearly a relevant issue for Members to take into account given the emerging thinking such as that contained within the Grimsey Review on how towns and cities will need to evolve and change to respond to the way on which people now choose to spend their leisure time.”

I have argued in a previous post that protecting the High Street as constituted now is no longer a sensible policy, and the tentative conclusion by officers on the Moor Exchange proposal suggests some support for this view.

Councillors, however, remain rooted in the belief that any substantial eastern retail development will damage the city centre and, bizarrely, the St Thomas district shopping centre to the west of the city centre.  The Leader of the Council invoked the spectre of Torquay as an example of what happens when edge of town sites are favoured, conveniently overlooking the general awfulness of the Torquay central area and the fact that the council there had no alternative vision for a town centre without big retail.  Exeter has a chance to avoid the same mistake, but only if councillors can show more imagination than they did on Monday evening.  Otherwise, as the Irish poet W B Yeats said of more weighty matters:

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world

 

 

Upon Sidwella’s Day

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St Sidwella could do more for Exeter than she (probably) ever dreamed of.  

St Sidwell’s Church on Exeter’s Sidwell Street commemorates the late St Sidwella, believed to have been alive in the 6th century.  Sidwella (whose name derives from all manner of genealogical speculation) is said to have been a modest, chaste, virginal, devout, and courageous local lass.  At least she was until a couple of farmworkers killed her off with a scythe.  The truth of all this is far from certain, since the story appears to have been sexed up by Bishop Grandisson in the 14th century, to introduce a wicked stepmother who paid the farmworkers to do the deed and the miraculous creation of a water spring where she fell.  For all we really know she was just a very naughty girl who hung out with the wrong sort of people. [1]

We have no information on Sidwella’s tastes in architecture and we cannot begin to imagine on what she would have thought of today’s Sidwell Street, including the dismal 1957-58 version of St Sidwell’s Church, designed by the same firm that gave us the nearby supermarket building and which could be mistaken for a modestly sized power station.  She might, however, have concluded that the 21st century was not beyond redemption if she visited today and discovered what goes on within the former church’s walls [2].

The building is now divided into three parts: a small chapel at the west end, social housing on the two upper floors, and the Community Centre offering a café and meeting rooms.  The Centre is run by an independent charity seeking to promote social inclusion.  It does so by bringing people together, whether as customers for the café’s locally produced food or as participants in the many training opportunities – including cooking – and users of facilities for groups.  The Centre also manages a vegetable garden in the church grounds.  Their website sells the Centre far better than I can, and it’s well worth a look.

The chapel is used for services once a week by a small but faithful congregation.  Its centrepiece is a stunning stained glass window by the Bideford artist James Paterson installed in 1958, juxtaposing the murder of a grim-looking Sidwella with the 1942 bombing of the previous 19th century church on the site.  A far more flattering image of the saint – shown at the end of this post – was found in a pane from the 19th century church, lost after the bombing and only recently rediscovered and restored following a Crowdfunding appeal.

On August 1st this year the Community Centre organised a small celebration of St Sidwella’s Day, following on one the previous year on August 2nd – so no definite Sidwella Day yet.  It was a really pleasant summer evening: musicians, one a fiddler (instant plus point for me); a barbecue; a live story-teller about St Sid herself; and a tour of the building.  And chat and networking.

Compared to some of the city’s other festivals such as Respect,  Pride and all the foodie stuff, it was a small affair, and none the worse for it.  But given the urge of the city council, the tourism industry and the wider business community to make Exeter the go-to destination of the peninsula, couldn’t we make a bit more of St Sidwella?  And why is she a figure that could command wide community support?

Her great advantage as a symbol is that so little is known about her that she could be deployed to almost any purpose.  An annual St Sidwella’s festival need not be linked to the politics of identity (as Respect and Pride are) nor to consumerism (the foodie and craft market ones).  Her religious trappings are minimal, at least today: she is not a “saint” in the sense of having been canonised, but rather a local “martyr” recognised by the local bishop, a practice which became so uncontrolled that in the 16th century the Catholic Church centralised authority for canonisations in Rome [3].  Instead, she could be seen variously as a symbol for civil society (the transfer of most of the church building to the community centre), for the natural environment (the well spring water), and through her secularisation a symbol that should not offend people of other faiths.

So why not an annual St Sidwella – or even plain Sidwella – festival that points a way towards a greener – the only sustainable – future?  It need not take the same form each year but rotate or innovate different activities.  For example, we could close key city centre streets to traffic for the day and use the space freed up for all manner of diversions.  Community entertainments, or for local groups to show off their work.  Or we could arrange open-air talks, public meetings and debates, practices that have largely disappeared into indoor meetings attended by a limited social spectrum.  Musical events – not the expensive Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra concert visits – but people playing their own instruments, in groups or solo, with local choirs who aren’t deemed “good enough” for cathedral concerts, or who don’t want to sing there.  Water sports on the river and canal.  The list goes on.  A key point is that everything should be free to spectators, unlike the foodie events where you pay several quid just to get past the front gate, or even Respect which introduced a £2 entry charge this year.

It needn’t stop at an annual festival.  Just as Crediton has milked St Boniface for all they think he’s worth – despite the fact that he did a bunk from Crediton to Germany as soon as he could – so Exeter could do more to promote Sidwella as a colourful part of the city heritage.  After all, we are soon to be blessed with a leisure centre called St Sidwell’s Point.  One of the Devon County Council electoral divisions in the city is now St Sidwell’s & St James.  She could even strike a blow for gender equality on the public transport system:  the three sainted railway stations are named after blokes: St David’s, St James and St Thomas, so let’s rename Exeter Central as Exeter St Sidwella’s.  She beats Exeter Live Better as a brand any day.

Sidwella could, above all, become the patron of Exeter’s movement for sustainable living.

DSC_0105 (2)

NOTES:

[1]  For those who want to know more about the Sidwella story, Hazel Harvey’s The Story of Exeter (The History Press, 2015) provides an easy overview at the beginning of Chapter 2.  I’m indebted to Hazel – the current President of the Exeter Civic Society – for the Bishop Grandisson reference, though the language in this post is my own.  More detail for those who are hooked is found in Nicholas Orme’s edition of Nicholas Roscarrock’s ‘Lives of the Saints’: Cornwall and Devon, published as volume 35 of the Devon and Cornwall Record Society’s publications http://www.devonandcornwallrecordsociety.co.uk/p/publications.html .

[2]  More about the church itself is at http://www.genuki.org.uk/big/eng/DEV/Exeter/StSidwell

[3]  See http://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/oi/authority.20110803100422710

Leisure centre business case stays secret

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This is such an unsexy story that I don’t expect the media to pick it up; but it’s worth putting on record to close this particular loop.

NEWS RELEASE                           

26 July 2018                              

St Sidwell’s Point business case stays secret

The long-running attempt by Exeter resident Peter Cleasby to force Exeter City Council to release the business case for the St Sidwell’s point leisure centre to public scrutiny has ended unsatisfactorily for both parties.

An Information Tribunal on 13 March 2017 heard an appeal from the City Council against a decision by the Information Commissioner that most of the business case should be made public under the Freedom of Information Act.  This followed a complaint by Mr Cleasby to the Commissioner in February 2016 that the Council’s refusal to release the information was in breach of the Act.  The Council argued that much of the material was commercially sensitive and disclosure would make it more difficult to negotiate an advantageous deal with contractors.

After the hearing, Peter Cleasby held discussions over several months with City Council officers, led by former Deputy Chief Executive Mark Parkinson, about alternative ways forward.  These culminated in an agreement that Mr Cleasby would not press his case further in the public interest and the Council in turn gave undertakings about future publication which would allow residents to judge the success or failure of the leisure centre project.  The Information Commissioner’s decision against the Council remains in place, though it will be not enforced.  The Tribunal judge approved the compromise on 6 July 2018.

Peter Cleasby commented:

“This has been a long-drawn out process.  I cannot now see any benefit in risking putting the Council’s negotiators at a disadvantage with contractors by continuing to insist on disclosure of what is by now an out-of-date business case.  Councillors have made it very clear that this project will proceed, despite ever-rising costs, and there seems little point in spending more public money on legal fees.  The Information Commissioner’s decision requiring publication remains on the table and could be reactivated in the future if circumstances justify that.

“However, the Council have conceded some important points.

“First, once the centre is operational they will provide an annual summary of the income forecast in the business case compared with income actually generated.

“Second, they will release as much information as they can about the building costs once the construction contract has been completed.

“Third, they have provided an old and redacted, but still interesting, copy of the project risk register, although they declined to put a regularly updated version of this on the Council website.  The copy given to me, without any restriction on further transmission, is available on my website at www.agreeninexeter.com/documents.

“No one is fully satisfied with this outcome, but I believe it to be the best available.  I would like to put on record the fact that Mark Parkinson and the Council’s legal officers were always courteous, helpful and positive in trying to find solutions to a genuinely difficult issue.”

[ends]

What’s going on at Clifton Hill?

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Exeter City Council’s decision to close the Clifton Hill Sports Centre and sell off the site and surrounding green space raises several important questions.

The story so far

One of nature’s reminders of human fragility was the heavy snow in March 2018 which damaged the roof of the Clifton Hill Sports Centre, resulting in its immediate closure.  Very quickly the City Council began suggesting that the facility would never re-open, a decision approved by the Council’s Executive on 12 June and endorsed by a specially-convened full Council meeting the following day [1].  In addition, the Council agreed a budget for the demolition of the sports centre and authorised the City Surveyor to include all the surrounding green space in a sale if that offered best value.  It also approved:

  • a budget of over £3 million for improvements to other sports facilities in the city; and
  • a last-minute proposal from the Leader of Council, made at the Executive meeting, to provide £150k to cover the shortfall faced by the Newtown Community Association in building replacement premises in the adjacent Belmont Park.

A petition objecting to the Council’s plans attracted 1,500 signatures, and separate campaigns have sprung up to save the building and the green space.

The first set of questions: why is the plan inconsistent with current Council aims and policies?

Health.  The proposal to build on a green field site of some 4.6 ha in an inner-city area flies in the face of all the evidence about the health benefits of open space [2].  It’s true that most of the area is not public open space in the sense that payment is required to access the leased facilities; but it is nonetheless a chunk of open space that is non-polluting.  An impartial report by the Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology [3] makes the following key points:

  • Areas with more accessible green space are associated with better mental and physical health.
  • The risk of mortality caused by cardiovascular disease is lower in residential areas that have higher levels of ‘greenness’.
  • There is evidence that exposure to nature could be used as part of the treatment for some conditions.

Wildlife.  Irrespective of the extent of public access, green space area provides a home for wildlife in an often hostile city environment.  The joint City Council/Devon Wildlife Trust initiative Exeter Wild City has as one of its objectives “Enhance and protect the wildlife value of green space in the city”.  As an old landfill site, the area would be ideal for wild flowers, to be pollinated by bees as part of a network (see next point).

Green Infrastructure [4].  Although much of the Green Infrastructure Strategy for Exeter focusses on new development, the Local Plan Core Strategy states that it “aims to promote and preserve biodiversity and green infrastructure across the city”.  A look at a map of Exeter shows that the green spaces of Belmont Park and the Clifton Hill site offer a clean green corridor from Blackboy Road towards Heavitree Road.  Not only would this provide an attractive and healthy alternative to walking on our traffic-filled roads, it would form – with private gardens – a key part of a green network enabling bees (and other insects) to spread their pollen around the city without encountering substantial gaps.

Public assets

Land is in short supply in Exeter.  The Council has just agreed two important and welcome measures which depend on the availability of publicly owned land for their success.  Why, then, is the Council set on selling off land it already owns?

Sport and recreation

The Council has agreed to spend £3 million of public money in improving sports facilities despite the fact that it has no strategy for their role and development.  In June 2016, fresh from winning the all-out Council elections, the lead councillor for health and well-being (and many other things), Councillor Bialyk, stated that he would “sign off and help implement the City Sports Strategy and Playing Pitch Strategy” [5].  In March 2018 the Council responded to a Freedom Information Act request about the Sports Strategy as follows: “…to date the Council has not adopted such a strategy. A Parks & Play Strategy, Playing Pitch, Built Sports and Leisure Facilities and Sports Development Strategies will be produced during 2018 underpinning an overarching Physical Activity Strategy” [5].  So why is the Council not waiting for these many, doubtless illuminating, strategies before spending £3 million in, presumably, a non-strategic way?  Why not save the cost of producing the strategies in the first place?

The second set of questions:  why the haste and lack of discussion of alternatives?

As noted above, the proposal has been rushed through the Council machinery at high speed.  Why?  During the full Council debate on 13 June, the Tory opposition called for a pause for breath, but Labour voted this down.  No reason for the haste has been given.

Excessive haste often leads to ill-informed decisions.  The officer report must have been drawn up in a hurry, because it contained errors and omissions.  For example:

  • The report states that the leases for the golf driving range and the rifle club are annual leases. They are not.
  • The report does not explain that the lease for the ski slope runs until December 2022, with no break clause.
  • The wider health and biodiversity benefits of the green space were not even flagged up, let alone discussed.

Haste also leads to inconsistent undertakings and decisions.  For example:

  • At the Executive meeting on 12 June, Councillor Bialyk said “any development of the site would be subject to consultation”. But the recommendations, subsequently adopted by the full Council, state: “4. Delegated authority be given to the City Surveyor to take necessary steps to ensure the land is used for residential accommodation and not used for purpose-built student accommodation.”  So if you can have anything you like as long as it’s housing, what’s the point of the consultation?

 

  • On the same point, where does the planning system come in? Any housing on the site would require the Council to grant planning permission.  The adoption of resolution 4 comes close to anticipating the outcome of what should be a distinct and separate process.  Given that the land is not allocated for housing in what passes for the Local Plan, and no planning permission exists, how is the Council going to sell the land to ensure it issued for housing.  And if the land is sold with some sort of covenant requiring housing, what happens if the Planning Committee turns down an application for planning permission?  Who would buy the land given such conditions?

 

  • Indeed, the authority given to the City Surveyor is muddled. As well as resolution 4 (above) resolution 3 states: “Delegated authority be given to the City Surveyor to include [with the sports centre site] the sale of the adjacent driving range, ski slope and Exeter Small Bore Rifle Club areas of the Clifton Hill site as a single development site if this offers the best value to the Council”.  But, hang on, read the words of the Leader at the full Council meeting: “the City Surveyor would not be able to make decisions to sell all or part of the site without further Member involvement through the appropriate democratic process”.  So what exactly has been delegated?  Or did the officer who produced the report and the draft resolutions – not the City Surveyor, by the way – hope that this might be slipped through unnoticed?

 

  • It’s also difficult to resist picking up on a piece of what might just be sloppy drafting. Resolution 1 states: “Clifton Hill Sport Centre be sold to generate a capital receipt”.  Note that this refers to the building being sold.  Yet resolution 10 provides for “up to £150,000 to demolish Clifton Hill Sports Centre to secure the site”.  Are they selling it or demolishing it?  I think we should be told.

And then there’s the lack of answers to questions raised in both meetings.  Unusually, the normally comatose Tory opposition was on the ball, asking some important questions, such as why had maintenance been allowed to get so far in arrears?  Did the Labour leadership answer?  Of course not.  Though to be fair, the officer report highlights the central government cuts in local authority funding as a reason for prioritising front-line services over maintenance, a policy that might now usefully be revisited.

Pause for thought might also have obviated a complaint from Exeter Green Party to the Council’s Monitoring Officer alleging that Labour councillors, whose party owns the freehold of a property adjacent to the site, should have declared a financial interest in the decision or sought a dispensation allowing them to vote.

Finally, is the Council throwing good money after bad?  The officer report includes this alarming comment: “The on-going maintenance of the facility has also been hindered by the contractual split of responsibilities between the Council as landlord and Legacy Leisure/Parkwood Leisure as the facility operator, and the time taken to negotiate whose responsibility repair and other works are” [6].  If similar problems are occurring at the other leisure centres – and since it’s a single contract, that’s a reasonable assumption – what guarantees do we have that the new investment will not lead to similar maintenance problems with the present contractor?

Can we learn anything from all this?

Yes.  First, that major decisions are best taken at a sensible pace with full consideration of all relevant information and watertight paperwork.  The process has all the characteristics of a “bounce” (an expression used by civil servants when trying to persuade ministers that they must agree to a risky course of action, and at once).  Unforeseen consequences are a common outcome.

Second, current local government processes work against effective scrutiny.  Lead councillors were simply able to ignore questions they didn’t want to answer.  At full Council meetings members are only allowed one supplementary question, which significantly reduces the ability to probe.  The proposal did not go to a Scrutiny Committee, where there is a theoretical possibility of pinning down the leadership, but nowhere near the level of scrutiny given by Parliamentary Select Committees.

Third, local authorities where one party has an impregnable majority can get away with pretty well anything.

NOTES:

[1]  The Council papers are worth reading, and are quoted from in this post.  The key documents are:

the officer report that went to both meetings (http://committees.exeter.gov.uk/documents/s64238/Built%20Sports%20and%20Leisure%20Facilities%20Plan%20Report%20for%20Executive%20June%202018%20FINAL.pdf );

the minutes of the Executive meeting (http://committees.exeter.gov.uk/documents/g5306/Public%20minutes%2012th-Jun-2018%2017.30%20Executive.pdf?T=11) ;

and the minutes of the Extraordinary Council Meeting (http://committees.exeter.gov.uk/documents/g6047/Printed%20minutes%2013th-Jun-2018%2018.00%20Extraordinary%20Meeting%20of%20the%20Council.pdf?T=1 )

[2]  See, for example, the following reports:

http://www.exeter.ac.uk/news/featurednews/title_349054_en.html

https://www.kingsfund.org.uk/projects/improving-publics-health/access-green-and-open-spaces-and-role-leisure-services

https://naturalengland.blog.gov.uk/2016/11/29/maximising-the-benefits-our-green-spaces-have-for-the-nations-health/

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/357411/Review8_Green_spaces_health_inequalities.pdf

[3]  Available at http://researchbriefings.parliament.uk/ResearchBriefing/Summary/POST-PN-0538?utm_source=directory&utm_medium=website&utm_campaign=PN538

[4]  Green Infrastructure is defined in the Core Strategy as: A network of, often interconnected, waterways, woodlands, wildlife habitats, parks and other natural areas and green spaces which supports the natural and ecological processes and is integral to the health and quality of life of sustainable communities by encouraging sustainable movement, recreational opportunities and/or climate change mitigation

[5]  Minutes of People Scrutiny Committee 2 June 2016 at http://committees.exeter.gov.uk/ieListDocuments.aspx?CId=626&MId=4825&Ver=4 item 6

[6]  See https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/sports_strategy_document#incoming-1123044 .

Put out some flags!

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Two important decisions this month show that Exeter City Council could at last be facing up to the real challenges confronting the city.

First, building more homes

After a long – very long – gestation period in the shadows, the Council’s proposal to set up a housing development company has burst into the sunlight.  Put simply, the plan is to set up a series of Council-controlled linked companies to build houses of the sort the communities need rather than what the volume housebuilders are prepared to offer.  To fund the housing, the companies will first of all build houses on Council-owned land, sell them at open-market prices and use the profits to fund what will be in practice public sector housing development, for sale and for rent [1].

Setting up a housing development company is not new: other councils have done it as a solution, even if only a partial one, to our housing crisis. But it is very encouraging to see Exeter City Council coming forward with a practical well-thought through plan of action (and not just another “strategy”).  There will doubtless be wrinkles to iron out, but the proposal deserves widespread support.

Second, beyond more homes and into wider development

The Council’s Executive had a busy meeting on 10 July.  Apart from the housing plan, they also considered a paper with the mind-numbing title of “Sustainable Financing Model for Exeter Infrastructure” [2].  But the content is quite the reverse of dull.  What is proposed is the creation of a publicly-owned City Development Fund to pay for infrastructure that will address congestion, urban sprawl, and inchoate development on a scale far greater than can be achieved with the housing development company.  The central idea is that the Council and public sector partners pool their land and other assets against which significant finance can be raised as borrowing.  Savings can be made by pooling overall control of projects, which reduces the need to spend on professional services for individual schemes (remember the £5 million and rising on services for Pete’s Pool before even a foot of tarmac is dug up!)

Senior councillors have agreed the officer recommendation that the model should not be based on partnerships with the private sector on the grounds that experience shows that the private sector ends up calling the shots in such arrangements.  For those of us concerned that Exeter could end up with something like the Haringey Development Vehicle [3], this decision is a profound relief. As with housing, the private sector cherry picks sites for development that will generate an average 20% return on the investment, money which goes to distant shareholders rather than be reinvested directly in Exeter.

The officer paper recognises that there is much more work to be done in fleshing out how the fund will work.  The major risks are recognised.  Questions that immediately occur to me include:

  • Given that planning policy controls in Exeter are weak, how does the Council plan stop private developers carrying on cherry-picking?
  • The fund is said to be available to cover Greater Exeter. Are the surrounding Tory-run Councils bought into a proposal intended to make life difficult for their private sector friends?
  • Will the City Council have enough assets of their own if other public sector partners won’t play?
  • How will the Council engage communities in its development plans?

Unlike the housing development company, this is untried ground for a local authority.  But there’s huge potential, both for our environment and our democracy if we get this right.

So what’s changing?

Both these proposals are inspiring.  They recognise that the self-interest of private sector has for too long given priority to shareholder expectations and failed to respond to what communities need and want.  We’ve had nearly 40 years of governments peddling neo-liberal economics as the default position, and now our local authority is turning round and starting to restore a civilised approach to development.

NOTES

[1]   The details, including the business case, are set out in a Council paper at http://committees.exeter.gov.uk/ieListDocuments.aspx?CId=112&MId=5310&Ver=4 item 14 of the agenda.  The full Council is due to rubber stamp the proposals on 24 July.

[2]   As note [1], item 10 of the agenda

[3]  See for example https://www.insidehousing.co.uk/news/news/lendlease-warns-haringey-council-over-planned-development-vehicle-cancellation-57185