Category Archives: Where we are now

Ultra vires

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Exeter City Council has voted to suspend parts of its constitution, despite not having the power do so. 

The sentiment that the first casualty of war is truth has been attributed to many sources, including the Greek dramatist Aeschylus. These days, at least in public life, truth is a vanishing commodity which doesn’t require a war to depose it, so we would do better to look at what else is under threat as the coronavirus sweeps through society. I refer only to the precariousness of our constitutional structures, not to the human costs of the virus.

Democratic accountability itself is wobbling. Some ministers treat parliamentary select committees and journalists with contempt by simply refusing to answer their questions. The default answer by government departments and ministers to any enquiry is a bland statement about how focussed and relentless the government is on ramping up whatever the tabloid press says needs ramping up.

The other pillar of society under threat is the rule of law. We have a now-invisible prime minister whose advice to the monarch on the prorogation of (an unhelpful) parliament was so blatantly illegal that it took the courts no time at all to overturn it. Since then we have seen (a supine) parliament nod through a massive set of emergency powers with next to no scrutiny, and their partial implementation by one or two over-zealous constabularies before the laws were actually in force. None of this is to argue that the emergency powers were neither necessary nor urgent. I simply use what has happened as an illustration of changing norms in public life and our willingness at times of crisis to look to “the authorities” to watch out for us, however driven by amoral expediency those authorities are perceived to be.

So what happened at Exeter City Council on 21 April 2020 should not perhaps have been seen as shocking, though indeed it was. Included in a long series of recommendations from the executive of senior councillors for approval by the full council was a set of measures intended to keep the council functioning through the coronavirus crisis. Central to these was an uncontentious amendment to make sure that the operation of powers delegated by the politicians to officers would not be interrupted if the officers to whom the powers were delegated fell ill.

Additional recommendations – to allow councillors to be absent without losing their seats, to arrange for meetings to be held remotely and to empower the city solicitor to amend the council’s constitution to keep it in line with any new legislative requirements – were also passed without comment.

But the 4th recommendation in the set – which was voted on separately from the rest – is where the council overstepped the mark. The recommendation adopted on 21 April states:

(4) suspending Articles 14 and 15 of the Constitution and Standing Orders 47 and 48 for the next six months, effective immediately, to allow for the Council’s Constitution to be amended by a simple majority of Council; [1]

The need for this specific measure is not spelt out. It is merely included as part of the wider package to enable the council to continue functioning in the event of officers and councillors being incapacitated. Standing Orders 47 and 48 set out the procedures for amending or suspending other standing orders.

Articles of the constitution take precedence over standing orders. Article 15, which the council has voted to suspend for six months, includes the unambiguous sentence: “The Articles of this Constitution may not be suspended”. There is no let-out clause allowing them to be suspended in certain circumstances. Nor is there is a general power  in the Coronavirus Act 2020 and subordinate regulations for councils to ignore their own constitutions.

The articles can of course be amended or revoked by following the approved procedure (Article 14) but they cannot be suspended. Given that Article 15 also provides for the suspension of Standing Order 48, it is difficult to see why the council should remove the power to suspend 48, since its own suspension is one of the stated objectives.

It is not as if councillors were unaware of this. At the executive meeting on 7 April, when the recommendations to full council were finalised, Green Party Councillor Diana Moore draw attention to the impossibility of suspending Articles 14 and 15. She was told by the leader, Councillor Phil Bialyk, that further information on her point would be provided in writing. By the time of the full council meeting Councillor Moore had not received the information. She therefore raised the point again, only to be told by Councillor Bialyk that he was not allowing any changes to the executive’s recommendations because they had been discussed fully there, supported by the leaders of the two opposition groups, and all issues were resolved (not quite, Phil). The offending recommendation was carried in full council with only the four councillors in the Progressive Group voting against.

In normal times, I would be among those rapidly accusing the council of acting beyond its powers – ultra vires – in suspending Articles 14 and 15. But these are not normal times and the pressures on local authorities – particularly ones like Exeter which are commendably doing a great deal to support vulnerable people and organisations – are too intense to expect them to engage in what many people will regard as unimportant nit-picking.

But it’s not unimportant. Even in difficult times, we should not allow public bodies unilaterally to set aside the rules. If the council makes use of any of the freedoms it thinks it has given itself by the suspension of Articles 14 and 15, there will be a reckoning when we are through the crisis.

Meanwhile, there’ll be a good news post for next week.

 

NOTES:

[1]        This is where the post gets a bit anoraky. The council’s constitution is set out at http://committees.exeter.gov.uk/ieListDocuments.aspx?CId=382&MId=6530&Ver=4&Info=1 . Part 2 lists the Articles which govern the role and powers of councillors, the committee structure and decision making by the council. Part 4 lists procedural rules which govern day to day council business, including standing orders for the conduct of meetings (4b).

No sanctions please, we’re councillors

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Scene:  A committee room in Exeter City Council’s Paris Street offices.

Cast:  Councillor Chris Musgrave (Green Party), Councillor Pete Edwards (Labour Leader of the Council), plus other members of the Corporate Services Scrutiny Committee, attendants, and a member of the public.

Cllr Musgrave (after having asked several questions stonewalled by the Leader):  What sanctions are available against Councillors who fail to act in line with the council’s constitution?

Cllr Edwards: None.

(Gasps of surprise, even from Labour members.  The Chair mutters something about committees – which is inaudible in the public seats = and moves onto next business. Later on, the curtain falls and everyone goes home.)

+++++

The story begins in May 2016 when Lewis Keen, then a student at Exeter University, was one of three Labour members elected for the St David’s ward.  After finishing his studies, Cllr Keen moved to London during 2018 and took up employment with Clarksons, a marine brokerage and shipping services conglomerate whose London HQ is in St Katherine’s Docks.  Not a Corbynite, then.  Emails to his Council address receive an auto-response referring the sender to the other ward councillors.  Since May 2018 he has attended 3 out of the 13 Council meetings where he was expected, and that non-attendance rate would have been much worse if the Labour group had not removed him from all Council committees in October 2018.  Keen has not claimed any allowances since July 2018, which may be honourable but is a clear admission that he was not doing the job he was elected to do.  Local media reported the story in November 2018

In that same month, Exeter Green Party made a formal complaint to the Council’s Monitoring Officer [1] about Keen’s continued absence.  The complaint argued that Cllr Keen had breached the City Council’s constitution, particularly Article 2.03 which sets out the responsibilities of councillors.  These are clear and specific, aimed at making sure councillors know what their jobs are and that they do them.  In brief, the Green Party argued it was impossible to comply with this part of the constitution if a councillor is living 200 miles away, returning to Exeter to attend the very occasional meeting and avoid disqualification.

The complaint also alleged that Cllr Keen, by his absence, breached the Members’ Code of Conduct.  The Code of Conduct is a less specific document, being primarily concerned with probity and with what councillors should not be doing.  This part of the complaint correspondingly tended towards matters of judgement rather than unarguable fact.

5 months later the Monitoring Officer responded to the complaint.  Cllr Keen was found not to have breached the Code of Conduct, which was no great surprise.  But, astonishingly, the complaints about breaches of Article 2 of the constitution were ruled out of order on the grounds that they were outside the scope of the complaints procedure.

The City Council’s complaints procedure relating to councillors states: “This procedure does not deal with complaints about matters that are not covered by the Members’ Code of Conduct.”  It seems to push hard at the limits of credibility that there is no procedure that comes into play when a councillor breaches other parts of the constitution, particularly Article 2.  Party discipline appears not to come into play here, since the Leader of the Council has said on another occasion that Cllr Keen’s conduct is nothing to do with him,

The Monitoring Officer stated the decision to the Green Party that “Cllr Keen’s failure to actively represent his constituents is not a matter regulated by the Code of Conduct. It is a matter to be determined at the ballot box.”  Which is a welcome recognition that Cllr Keen has indeed failed to represent his constituents, but it doesn’t help with solving the problem about what to do with a councillor, elected for a 4-year term, who decides not to do the job anymore but hang on as a councillor anyway (as in the Keen case).

Which was why Cllr Musgrave asked the question set out at the beginning of this post.

 

 

NOTES:

[1]  All local authorities are required to appoint a Monitoring Officer whose duties include handling complaints against councillors, in conjunction with an Independent Person or, where they still exist, a standards committee of the authority.

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.

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 (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

 

 

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 .

Can the Council be a leader?

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Exeter City Council’s default position is to look inwards on itself, but it can’t show the necessary 21st century leadership until that culture changes.

Most people from the City Council who’ve read as far as this will already be outraged at what they see as a misrepresentation.  They will argue that Council consults on proposed policies, publishes information about spending and services, holds most of its committee business in public and has a network of ward councillors to feed in residents’ concerns.  Well, that’s all true.  But is it sufficient?

Let’s explore further the notion that the Council is inward-looking.  As always, examples are illuminating.

The non-development at the bus station site

I’ve blogged at length about the planned redevelopment of the bus station site [1] and the subsequent refusals of the political leadership to reconsider the publicly funded flagship leisure centre project.  This, despite rising costs, public scepticism and the plug being pulled by the private sector developers on their part of the site. A recent external peer review of the Council pointed out that the status quo is more than a bit dodgy, reaching such conclusions as [2]:

  • “many stakeholders – external and internal – are not clear on the purpose and priority of [the redevelopment project]”
  • “there is an ongoing need to engage with partners and stakeholders to reiterate the purpose and benefits of the scheme.”
  • “it may be worth the council developing contingency plans and keeping an open mind about the best use of this site (and alternative potential locations for a new improved leisure centre), in case better redevelopment proposals come forward.”

Couched in the polite language of these reviews, this is a serious slap on the wrist for the Council’s tunnel vision.

Lack of public clarity on spending plans

The 2018/19 budget for the City Council is set out in a 130-page report, including many financial tables.  So when a member of the public asked at a recent scrutiny committee what would be the impact of the 30% reduction shown in spending on advisory services, she was told that it wasn’t a reduction because the way in which accounting for overheads had been changed [3].  Our sole Green Party councillor received a similar response from the Chief Finance Officer when he asked about an apparent cut in the recycling budget.  No doubt this was explained in the small print, but there is no way a busy non-expert could easily work it out.

So I asked another scrutiny committee if they would support a rule change which required future budget tables to explain, for each budget line, whether spending changes were real changes or accounting changes, and if the former what would be the impact on services.  The response set out the various opportunities councillors had for scrutinising and questioning draft budgets in detail.  Nowhere in the response was there any suggestion that the wider public – whose money is being spent – might have an interest in understanding these tables as well.

Disrupting the community grants arrangements

Exeter Community Forum is a City Council-supported bottom-up initiative aimed at strengthening the voices of community-led organisations in the City [4].  Among its activities is the operation of the Grass Roots Grants scheme, a function delegated to the Forum by the City Council.  The grants panel includes one councillor from the Executive and is serviced by the Council’s communities programme officer.  The Chair and 3 other panel members are drawn from the Forum’s community membership.  Award decisions require ratification by the Council, so there is no loss of control over public funds.

Earlier this month, and completely out of the blue, some Labour councillors on a scrutiny committee of the Council proposed that a review should be carried out of the Grants panel “to consider whether there was a need for greater accountability and scrutinisation (sic) of its processes and to examine if a change of approach through increasing the involvement of Members was desirable” [5].  The recommendation was rubber-stamped by the Executive the following day.  No evidence was brought forward to justify the review, which by implication slurs the competence and integrity of the volunteers on the current panel.  No one, including the Council’s own programme officer and the officers of the Exeter Community Forum, was involved in any prior discussion.  But then mature informed engagement is not the Exeter City Council way.

Lack-lustre approach to improving air quality

Then we have the draft Air Quality Action Plan currently out for comment [6]. The Council proudly laid on a consultation exhibition at the Guildhall.  It consisted of half a dozen uninformative poster boards, and the usual questionnaire of the “do you agree” tick box variety, which didn’t even have a return address on it.  But perhaps the most telling example of how the Council sees itself was the first line in all the publicity: “Exeter City Council has a statutory duty to measure air pollution and to produce an Action Plan with measures to control the air quality in and around the city.”  In other words, it’s all about them the Council, and not about us the citizens.  Couldn’t they have opened with a line like “Exeter City Council is asking for your help to find new ways of making our air cleaner” ?

Top down planning policy

Public involvement in planning policy consists of being given an opportunity to comment on draft plans for which the main themes have already been agreed behind closed doors [7].

The leaking Housing Development Company

The Council’s plans to set up a Housing Development Company to build much-needed housing are public only to the extent that we know they want to set one up, and that they have commissioned further studies into the extent of private sector involvement in the company.  A FOI Act request to see the business case has just been turned down by the Council, although the peer review report had already leaked – inadvertently or not – a very useful summary of the business case into the public domain [8].

 

These illustrations of how the City Council does its business are not meant to suggest the organisation is inefficient.  Indeed, deciding things internally and pushing them through with a minimum of public involvement can be held up as an efficient process: low input, big output.  But it is most certainly far less effective in achieving Council and community priorities.

It’s the lack of real community engagement that seems central to the Council’s problem.  All the examples above show that the Council is set in a way of doing things that relegates community engagement to a low priority, if indeed it acknowledges it all.  Nor is this an issue confined to Exeter: the Local Government Association found that across England satisfaction with levels of council-community engagement was relatively low compared to other satisfaction indicators [9].  The survey identified that the four most popular changes councils could make were:

  • Explain more clearly how it is using your money
  • Make it clearer how residents can get involved in decision-making
  • Demonstrate more clearly how it is acting on residents’ feedback
  • Explain more clearly its decisions when they affect you

These are very modest changes, though very much in the right direction.  Yet Exeter City Council could – and should – go much further.  Its vision for the city is [10]:

Our Economy

  • A prosperous city
  • A learning city
  • An accessible city

Our Society

  • A city with strong communities
  • A city that is healthy and active
  • A safe city

Our Environment

  • A city that cares for the environment
  • A city with homes for everyone
  • A city of culture

This is a good vision, and if realised would be transformative.  To get there, strong civic inclusive leadership will be needed.  A style of leadership which is far removed from the current ways of doing public business and which will overcome not only the inwardness culture but also the “old politics” I described in The Old Politics no longer serves us well.  Over the next couple of months, and drawing on the strengths that do exist in Exeter City Council, I will try to set out what this leadership might look like.

 

NOTES:

[1] See Off the Buses and Scrutiny can work.

[2] From the report of the Exeter Corporate Peer Challenge, one of a programme of reviews sponsored by the Local Government Association, is available at item 35 of the minutes of the Executive meeting on 13 March 2018 at http://committees.exeter.gov.uk/ieListDocuments.aspx?CId=112&MId=5305&Ver=4

[3] People Scrutiny Committee, 12 March 2018, item 12 of minutes at http://committees.exeter.gov.uk/ieListDocuments.aspx?CId=626&MId=5976&Ver=4.  To get the full question and response, you need to download the pdf of the “Printed Draft Minutes”.

[4] For information on the Exeter Community Forum, see http://exetercommunityforum.net/who

[5] People Scrutiny Committee, 12 March 2018, item 16 of minutes at http://committees.exeter.gov.uk/ieListDocuments.aspx?CId=626&MId=5976&Ver=4

[6] See https://exeter.gov.uk/aqap/

[7] See my post Our Planners’ Cat is out of the Bag.  Further evidence that GESP is already done and dusted is on page 9 of the Corporate Peer Challenge (see note 2 above) where Exeter’s housing need is summarised.

[8] Also on page 9 of the Corporate Peer Challenge (see note 2 above)

[9] See survey findings at https://www.local.gov.uk/sites/default/files/documents/Feb%202017%20Resident%20Satisfaction%20Polling.pdf pages 15-16.

[10] As set out in Exeter’s Sustainable Community Strategy 2009, aka the Exeter Vision.  It is no longer available on the Council’s website, but is referenced as Appendix 5 of the Core Strategy adopted in 2012 (https://exeter.gov.uk/planning-services/planning-policy/local-plan/core-strategy-development-plan-document/ ).

Our planners’ cat is out of the bag

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Consultation on the Greater Exeter Strategic Plan (GESP) looks like being an expensive and time-wasting ritual.

Beware of too sublime a sense
Of your own worth and consequence.
The man who dreams himself so great,
And his importance of such weight,
That all around in all that’s done
Must move and act for him alone,
Will learn in school of tribulation
The folly of his expectation.

(From The Retired Cat by William Cowper, 1791)

Last week CPRE Devon arranged a public meeting to discuss the emerging Greater Exeter Strategic Plan (GESP).  The room was packed with over 160 people, thus giving the lie to those who believe that people aren’t interested in spatial planning.

The formal presentations – one from the Growth Point and one from the GESP team – didn’t add much to the store of existing knowledge.  After all, the Plan doesn’t exist yet, so how can anyone say anything about it?  What we did discover is that the GESP timetable is slipping badly:  at one time their website stated the consultation draft would be out in January 2018, but today’s timetable is that it will appear in “Autumn 2018”.  We also discovered something else that I don’t think we were meant to discover, about which more in a moment.

The last platform speaker was the East Devon MP, Sir Hugo Swire.  I don’t usually have a lot of time for his views [1] but on this occasion he said some sensible things.  Like pointing out that writing a plan to predict our needs 22 years hence – the plan is to cover the period up to 2040 – is an unrealistic endeavour given the pace of technological change which affects social behaviour, service provision and employment patterns.  Or reminding us that there is brownfield land for housing within and immediately around Exeter which could be used up without building on green fields and forcing people to commute even further into the city’s employment zones.  And having a pot at the volume housebuilders and their standard house designs which are out of keeping with any of our vernacular architectures.  He then joined in the area’s favourite sport of bashing Exeter City Council’s ruling Labour group.

After the coffee break and the departure of the MP we were treated to a party political broadcast, masquerading as a question, from the Labour county councillor for Alphington and Cowick.  Then I caught the Chair’s eye and asked two questions.  The first related to my hobby-horse on housing density [2] which attracted no response from the platform or anywhere else except from an audience member who seemed not to understand the difference between high density and high rise.

The second was on the GESP planning process.  I have a rule that I don’t publicly criticise civil servants or local government officers by name, on the grounds that unless they’ve gone rogue they are doing their political bosses’ bidding.  So I shall simply refer to the recipient of my question as The Planner.  Prefacing my remarks with a well-received (by the audience) statement that planning in this country was done to us, not by us, I asked The Planner whether he thought the paltry 6 weeks being allowed for comment on the GESP consultation draft was fair.  The Planner said it was indeed fair, on the grounds that people never responded until right at the end of the consultation period however long it was.

Stumped by the non sequitur of the reply, my supplementary question was that they should at least now publish the completed evidence studies commissioned in support of the plan.  That way, those of us who couldn’t pay for armies of consultants to read the stuff could do some preparation ourselves before the consultation draft came out.  And this is where the cat’s head became visible in the opening of the bag.

The Planner paused for thought, presumably recognising the reasonableness of the question.  He then conceded that it might be possible to publish some studies, but not those which would give any clues as to what would be in the draft plan.  Hang on, I said, from a sedentary position– the Chair was a man of tolerance and wisdom – you’re saying that some planning policies have already been decided and the evidence has been commissioned to back up those decisions?  You’re putting words into my mouth, said The Planner, but I didn’t hear him deny it.

So now we know what the secretive Greater Exeter Visioning Board [3] was doing two years ago.  It was deciding the outline content of what is to become the GESP.  And the evidence was then commissioned to back up those key decisions, not to expose them to challenge.  It’s an easy process:  you just tell the consultants what assumptions and constraints to build in, and you end up with an impressive-looking piece of “evidence” that will be a wow at a public examination of the plan.

I wasn’t alone in complaining about the 6-week consultation period.  A practitioner far more experienced than I am commented that the mandatory period used to be 12 weeks, and 8 weeks was regarded as the minimum for best practice purposes.  How were organisations whose committees met every 6 weeks going to prepare their comments?  That cut no ice with The Planner either.

Interestingly,  Exeter’s chief planning officer recently told our Green Party councillor that the 6-week period was necessary because the GESP had to be produced as quickly as possible so that the City Council could put in place a new local plan to replace the current one declared by the Planning Inspectorate as not fit for purpose.  Being not fit for purpose means that developers can build pretty much where they like.  Well, the delays in producing the first GESP draft don’t exhibit much of a sense of urgency.  Given that the main content of the GESP has already been decided, why don’t we just skip all the expensive and time-consuming process of producing a formal, approved strategic joint plan?  Just tell the district councils what they’ve already secretly decided between themselves and they can then amend their local plans to conform.  As things stand, we’ll have developers running riot in Exeter until 2022 at the earliest.

No, that’s not very democratic is it?  Not in the spirit of engaging communities in deciding their own futures.  But until the attitudes exhibited by The Planner and his bosses are set aside, democracy and engagement don’t look having any place in our planning system.  Has no one learned the lesson of the Brexit referendum – which is what happens when people feel locked out?

NOTES

[1]  See for example my post https://petercleasby.com/2015/03/02/the-trouble-with-this-election-is-that-the-voters-might-think-for-themselves/

[2]  See my posts at https://agreeninexeter.com/2016/11/14/wider-still-and-wider/ and https://agreeninexeter.com/2017/03/27/how-dense-can-we-be/

[3]  See my posts at https://agreeninexeter.com/2016/08/05/whose-vision-is-it-anyway-part-1/ and https://agreeninexeter.com/2016/08/05/whose-vision-is-it-anyway-part-2/

Normal service will resume on 3 January

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Well, if you’ve read this sign on Exeter’s Stagecoach buses, not exactly.

With a delightful irony (whether intended or not, only the editor will know), today’s Express & Echo runs two adjacent stories on page 10.  The first is about an Exeter University-led project studying commuting patterns with the aim of reducing the city’s traffic congestion.  The survey stage of the project found that car commuters who also use public transport are 20% more likely to use public transport if they are influenced by the traffic congestion information they receive [1].

The second page 10 article explains in some detail how Stagecoach is celebrating the New Year by making “mergers, cuts and frequency changes” to Exeter area bus services.  And which group of bus users will be most affected by the changes?  Yep, commuters.  Two of the Park & Ride services are being merged and reduced to a 15-minute frequency (a year ago, the interval was 10 minutes).  The frequency on the commuter route from Crediton is being reduced from 4 an hour to 3 an hour (and the service from western Crediton from half-hourly to hourly).  Newton Abbot to Exeter services are cut from 3 an hour to 2 an hour, though passengers will doubtless feel greatly compensated by the news that their buses will in future be painted purple.

We know that the number of car journeys made by commuters into Exeter is twice that of car journeys within the city [3].  So cutting commuting is the key to cutting congestion and pollution.  Even Stagecoach say they recognise this – on publication of the group’s half-year results in October 2016, the chief executive said: “There is a large market opportunity for modal shift from cars to public transport against a backdrop of population growth, urbanisation, technological advancements, and increasing pressure to tackle road congestion and improve air quality” [4].

Clearly Stagecoach don’t believe that market opportunity exists in Exeter, despite the fact that the “backdrop” conditions for it are here in abundance.  After all, it’s the shareholder dividend that counts, isn’t it?

 

NOTES

[1] There are other very interesting findings.  For details see the Engaged Smart Transport project at http://www.commute-exeter.com/results/

[2] Stagecoach service update information at https://www.stagecoachbus.com/promos-and-offers/south-west/exeter-area-timetable-changes-from-3-january-2017

[3] Findings of a study by Trevor Preist, promoted by Exeter Civic Society and Transition Exeter.

[4] http://www.stagecoach.com/media/news-releases/2016/2016-12-07.aspx