My latest report to St Enoder Parish Council

Tomorrow night, I will be presenting my latest monthly report to a meeting of St Enoder Parish Council. It will cover the time period of 23rd October to 26th November, and will be as follows:

1. Council meetings

During the last month, I have attended a range of formal meetings at, and associated with, the unitary authority. These included: Full Council (and associated agenda briefing); Cabinet; Economic Growth and Development Overview and Scrutiny Committee; Neighbourhoods OSC; Electoral Review Panel (and, as vice-chairman of the Committee, a meeting for Cornwall Councillors at Launceston plus three associated public meetings in Liskeard, Pool and Truro); Group Leaders’ meeting; (two) member briefings covering topics such as a government consultation on housing and a Cornwall-wide residents survey; China Clay Area Network meeting; a consultation meeting on a possible housing development in Summercourt; and a “Housing Delivery and Growth Summit.

In the same period, as well as a number of informal meetings with council officers and others, I attended three meetings of St Enoder Parish Council.

2. Other meetings and activities

I have attended meetings of ClayTAWC (where I am Chairman) and the St Austell Bay Economic Forum. As well, I helped out at the 40th annual show of the Indian Queens Cage Bird Society, which took place on 25th November at Fraddon Village Hall.

3. Investment programme from Cornwall Council

See previous blog entry.

4. Strategic narrative for Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly

In recent weeks, there was considerable coverage of the work being done by a consultancy firm on a “strategic narrative” for Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly. I have been extremely critical of what has been happening and it very much came into the public domain when a presentation was made to the “Cornwall and Isles of Scilly Leadership Board,” which comprises senior councillors and representatives of various public sector bodies.

In particular, I had written to the leader of Cornwall Council on this matter as follows:

“You will already be aware of our misgivings about how the leadership of Cornwall Council commissioned this report for the ‘Cornwall and Isles of Scilly Leadership Board’ without any input from the wider democratic membership of Cornwall Council.

”On numerous occasions I have raised concerns about this, and I have also, quite often, asked about the progress of the work being undertaken by the consultants thinkingplace, but have had little or no meaningful feedback. This includes at the most recent meeting of the Economic Growth and Development Overview and Scrutiny Committee on 1st November, which was only two days before the presentation to the ‘Leadership Board’ on 3rd November.

”I have received a number of concerns from people who have heard about Friday’s briefing at the ‘Board’ meeting, and I took some time over the weekend to view the webcast. I share the concerns that have been raised with me, and I note that it was confirmed at the Board meeting that the ‘strategic narrative’ would be launched in January 2018.

”I am seeking clarity on what the role of the Cornwall Council’s elected members will be in this process in the coming weeks, and when we will be able to have our say about the ‘vision’ for Cornwall should actually be.

”In addition, I was concerned to see that in the Board’s work programme, under ‘regional and sector collaboration,’ there was the ‘development of a Great South West’ proposition. This is not something that my group supports. We remain concerned at the significant effort going into this ‘regional’ experiment from representatives of the public sector in Cornwall when they should be making a better case for the primacy of Cornwall in all forms of governance, administration, etc.”

5. Waste Collection and Cleansing Contract

Since the last Parish Council meeting, I have made representations about the limited extent of street cleaning in rural communities and the number of public waste bins in communities such as ours.

The Neighbourhoods OSC and the Cabinet have agreed that, as part of the ongoing work setting out the content of the next contract (for waste collection, street cleaning, beach cleaning, etc), additional analysis on these areas of concern. Further to the Parish Council’s formal request to Cornwall Council for enhanced bin coverage in St Enoder Parish, I am in discussions with council officers and will update further when I have firm feedback.

6. Outreach Post Office at Indian Queens

The outreach Post Office continues to be run from the ante-room of the Indian Queens Victory Hall for two three-hour sessions each week.

Unfortunately, there have been some technical problems which meant that, on a few occasions, it could not be opened, but it looks like these issues have been sorted.

7. St Enoder Neighbourhood Plan

An additional consultation was about the appropriate level of housing growth in Summercourt has taken place. The forms were hand-delivered to all properties in the village along with a freepost envelope, and all responses received will be in assessed in the near future and fed back into the work to produce our Neighbourhood Plan.

8. Planning matters

I am dealing with a range of planning and enforcement matters in St Enoder Parish, and will report in more detail in my next monthly report.

At this time however, I can confirm that the appeals relating to conditions at the Higher Fraddon biogas plant will be heard by an informal hearing. This will take place at Roche Victory Hall on 7th February.

9. Highway matters

I am also following up on a host of highway issues, including speed recordings at three locations, and I will also report in more detail in my next monthly report.

10. Grass cutting (Cornwall Council)

With regard to my ongoing representations to Cornwall Council about the maintenance of those areas in our parish which they own, I can report that the unitary authority has finally started to sort out the garden area in Clodan Mews, St Columb Road.

11. WW1 project

I am very pleased to be able to lay a wreath at the St Enoder War Memorial on Remembrance Sunday, and that our First World War project is up and running. We held our first community engagement event at Summercourt’s New Memorial Hall on 4th November and similar events are planned elsewhere in the Parish.

We have already received photographs of soldiers from two local families, which will be featured in the book.

12. Opposition to Devonwall

At the recent Cornwall Council meeting, I moved a motion reaffirming the unitary authority’s opposition to a cross-Tamar parliamentary seat. There was massive support for the motion – and it was across all political parties.

The strength of the vote for the motion (and against Devonwall) was so great that the Chairman, Mary May, did not even bother to ask if there were any votes against the motion.

The agreed motion was as follows:

”1. Cornwall Council write to the Prime Minister and the UK Government to request that they (a) take measures to end the parliamentary boundary review and stop the imposition of a cross-Tamar Devonwall constituency, and (b) ensure that future boundary reviews respect the articles of the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities and guarantee that parliamentary constituencies remain fully within the boundaries of Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly;

”2. Cornwall Council write to all the Members of Parliament for Cornwall to seek their urgent and active support for the efforts of the unitary authority and others to ensure that Cornwall’s territoriality is respected.”

13. Inquiries

During the couple of months, I have also helped numerous people with guidance on a vast array of issues.

My thoughts on the UK budget and the Council's investment programme

The Chancellor of the Exchequer’s latest budget has been slammed by a very diverse range of bodies and individuals.

Philip Hammond has been criticised for failing to address the crisis in social care and for rejecting pleas from the NHS for an emergency injection of £4 billion. Serious concerns have also been raised that the “lion’s share” of the increased investment in housing was not geared towards the provision of much-needed affordable homes.

In addition, there has been considerable anger at the location of capital projects supported by Philip Hammond. The Western Morning News featured a picture of Mr Hammond laughing at the opposition’s response to his budget alongside the headline: “Budget that neglects West is no joke, Chancellor.”

The newspaper and many others went on to claim that the South West had been snubbed, with more investment going to areas with the UK Government’s favoured “metro-mayors.”

The one exception to this analysis was the confirmation that Cornwall Council’s request for £79 million towards a link road between St Austell and the A30 had been granted.

This announcement, which has been extremely well-received in mid Cornwall, came in the same week that councillors on the unitary authority voted to support a large capital programme entitled: “An Investment Programme for Cornwall: delivering homes, jobs and infrastructure for communities and places.”

There is considerable logic which underpins this local programme with an initial budget of £70 million that is projected to grow to £600 million during the life of the scheme.

Its supporters have argued that intervening in construction would give the unitary authority greater control over the quality of those developments that it is involved with and could, for example, increase the amount of affordable housing.

They have also made it clear that the developments will, in the long-term, generate a financial return to go towards the funding of those basic council services that have been starved of cash by central government cuts.

Though I could understand the rationale for the programme, I have had negative experiences of “place-shaping” in my local area and therefore had a range of questions about how it would operate.

In a number of formal meetings, I queried how the sites for intervention would be selected, how the local elected members would be able to influence the programme and ensure that the Council did not invest in proposals that were not supported by local communities.

Sadly, these queries were not adequately addressed by the officers and senior councillors that I questioned. My frustrations were undoubtedly heightened because of the manner in which the leadership of the unitary authority had commenced work on a “strategic narrative” for Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly without any input from the wider democratic membership of Cornwall Council.

For these reasons, I was unable to vote to support the programme.

[This is my article in this week's Cornish Guardian].

Cornwall Council votes to oppose Devonwall

At today’s Cornwall Council, I moved a motion reaffirming the unitary authority’s opposition to a cross-Tamar parliamentary seat.

I am therefore very pleased to be able to report that there was massive support for the motion – and it was across all political parties.

The strength of the vote for the motion (and against Devonwall) was so great that the Chairman, Mary May, did not even bother to ask if there were any votes against the motion.

The agreed motion was as follows:

1. Cornwall Council write to the Prime Minister and the UK Government to request that they (a) take measures to end the parliamentary boundary review and stop the imposition of a cross-Tamar Devonwall constituency, and (b) ensure that future boundary reviews respect the articles of the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities and guarantee that parliamentary constituencies remain fully within the boundaries of Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly;

2. Cornwall Council write to all the Members of Parliament for Cornwall to seek their urgent and active support for the efforts of the unitary authority and others to ensure that Cornwall’s territoriality is respected.

Opposition to Devonwall constituency

At tomorrow’s meeting of Cornwall Council, I have tabled a motion reaffirming the unitary authority’s opposition to a cross-Tamar parliamentary seat.

It will be as follows:

1. Cornwall Council write to the Prime Minister and the UK Government to request that they (a) take measures to end the parliamentary boundary review and stop the imposition of a cross-Tamar Devonwall constituency, and (b) ensure that future boundary reviews respect the articles of the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities and guarantee that parliamentary constituencies remain fully within the boundaries of Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly;

2. Cornwall Council write to all the Members of Parliament for Cornwall to seek their urgent and active support for the efforts of the unitary authority and others to ensure that Cornwall’s territoriality is respected.

The motion has full cross-party support. It is seconded by Jesse Foot (Lib Dem) and is also supported by Stephen Barnes (Labour), Bert Biscoe (Independent), Martin Eddy (Lib Dem), Andrew Long (MK) and James Mustoe (Conservative).

I will update with the outcome tomorrow.

Real action needed on tax avoiders

The tax affairs of the rich and famous are once again under public scrutiny. This follows the “Paradise Papers” leak of 13.4 million files from “two offshore service providers” and the company registries of 19 tax havens.

The files reveal much about the financial affairs of some of the world’s richest individuals and biggest multinational companies, and details the myriad ways in which they avoid paying tax.

We hear a lot about the difference between tax evasion and tax avoidance.

Tax evasion is clearly illegal, when a person or a business deliberately misrepresents the true state of their affairs for tax purposes.

Tax avoidance however is not illegal, but allows individuals or corporations to “exploit” the tax system to reduce their liabilities. This often includes “artificial transactions” through offshore companies which, though not technically unlawful, are nonetheless shameful.

Just look at the convoluted actions of the Formula I racing driver, Lewis Hamilton, uncovered via the “Paradise Papers.”

To dodge taxes of more than £3 million on the purchase of a private jet costing £16.5 million, Hamilton’s advisors used “shell companies” in places such as the Isle of Man, British Virgin Islands, and Guernsey.

In a complicated scheme, Hamilton’s advisors achieved the tax dodge by setting up an artificial “leasing business” through which Hamilton rented his jet, for free, from himself. Similar arrangements were concocted to purchase a €1.7m motorhome.

Sadly, such schemes do not represent isolated episodes, but are a popular tactic for the very rich to play the system.

As far as I am concerned, it is a disgrace that such rich individuals have been able to divert millions from the public purse into their own pockets. And instead of the money being used to fund public services such as the National Health Service, it has presumably been used to fund the luxury lifestyles of a small minority.

It is simply wrong that people with access to well-paid accountants and lawyers can be treated differently to the rest of us when it comes to payment of tax.

As a result of such industrial levels of tax avoidance, ordinary people are suffering greatly because of the cuts in public spending

The Office of National Statistics recently reported that the “tax gap” – the difference between the amount of tax that should, in theory, be collected by HMRC and what is actually collected – is estimated to be £34 billion (£34,000,000,000) each year. Others such as the PCS union claim the “tax gap” is even greater.

Surely, it is time that the Government must take decisive action on such tax cheats and eradicate all these ridiculous avoidance schemes.

[This will be my article in this week’s Cornish Guardian].

Thanks for the support at Conference

Thanks to everyone who attended yesterday’s MK Conference at Bodmin and the many kind and supportive words about my two decades at the helm of Mebyon Kernow.

I am particularly grateful to Michael Bunney and Julie Fox (pictured above) for conspiring to celebrate the occasion with a wonderful homemade cake.

Remembering the fallen of the First World War

Thousands of people attended the recent Remembrance commemorations across Cornwall and I was honoured to be able to lay a wreath at my local war memorial in St Enoder Churchtown today.

It is my strong belief that we need to properly remember the dead from all conflicts and, as we continue to mark the centenary of the First World War, it is especially important that we do more to learn about the conflict which engulfed the globe between 1914 and 1918.

I think it is especially difficult for people in this modern age to fully comprehend the magnitude of the losses of “The Great War,” in which ten million service personnel and some six million civilians died.

Looking back one hundred years, the most famous battle of 1917 was Passchendaele, also known as the Third Battle of Ypres, in which more than 500,000 men died.

Siegried Sassoon famously wrote about the three-month confrontation in one of his poems, stating “… I died in Hell (they called it Passchendaele),” while Private R. A. Colwill, writing about the area in early 1918, recounted: “There was not a sign of life of any sort. Not a tree, save for a few dead stumps which looked strange in the moonlight. Not a bird, not even a rat or a blade of grass. Nature was as dead as those Canadians whose bodies remained where they had fallen the previous autumn. Death was written large everywhere.”

The overall extent of all this suffering, at Ypres and elsewhere, was truly terrifying but each loss was also intensely personal.

I am therefore pleased to be heavily involved with St Enoder Parish Council’s community project to tell the stories of the men from Fraddon, Indian Queens, St Columb Road and Summercourt who lost their lives in the First World War.

Thanks to a grant of £7,500 from the Heritage Lottery Fund, we will be working with a range of local organisations to produce a book about the sixty-plus local servicemen, mostly clay workers and farm labourers, who did not return home from WW1.

We have tasked ourselves to discover all we can about who these men were, what they did in their lives and what happened to them.

But we won’t just be focusing on the men’s service records. We aim to tell their stories as the sons, husbands, brothers and friends that they were, and also explore the consequences for the sweethearts, wives, children, parents and siblings they left behind.

If you have any information which you think might be useful to the St Enoder Parish First World War Project, please feel free to get in contact with me on 07791 876607.

[This will be my article in this coming week's Cornish Guardian].

For more information about the St Enoder Parish First World War Project see:
St-Enoder-Parish-First-World-War-Project

MK Conference: Saturday 18th November. All welcome.

MK's 2017 Conference is just over one week away. It takes place at the Bodmin Shire House Suite on Saturday 18th November and all are welcome to attend.

Mebyon Kernow's AGM will take place in the morning (10.15 start) and a number of motions will be debated.

In the afternoon (2.00 start), there will be a number of speeches which will include my annual address which will look back over my twenty years as MK leader.

We would love to see you at the event.

The below image is the MK leadership team from last year's Conference.

MK concerns about "strategic direction" study

Today, I have sent the below email to the leader of Cornwall Council. It is self explanatory.

As the leader of the Mebyon Kernow group, I am writing to formally express my concern at the nature of the work on the “strategic narrative” for Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly.

You will already be aware of our misgivings about how the leadership of Cornwall Council commissioned this report for the “Cornwall and Isles of Scilly Leadership Board” without any input from the wider democratic membership of Cornwall Council.

On numerous occasions I have raised concerns about this, and I have also, quite often, asked about the progress of the work being undertaken by the consultants thinkingplace, but have had little or no meaningful feedback. This includes at the most recent meeting of the Economic Growth and Development Overview and Scrutiny Committee on 1st November, which was only two days before the presentation to the “Leadership Board” on 3rd November.

I have received a number of concerns from people who have heard about Friday’s briefing at the "Board" meeting, and I took some time over the weekend to view the webcast. I share the concerns that have been raised with me, and I note that it was confirmed at the Board meeting that the “strategic narrative” would be launched in January 2018.

I am seeking clarity on what the role of the Cornwall Council’s elected members will be in this process in the coming weeks, and when we will be able to have our say about the “vision” for Cornwall should actually be.

In addition, I was concerned to see that in the Board’s work programme, under “regional and sector collaboration,” there was the “development of Great South West.” This is not something that my group supports. We remain concerned at the significant effort going into this “regional” experiment from representatives of the public sector in Cornwall when they should be making a better case for the primacy of Cornwall in all forms of governance, administration, etc.

MK response to UK Government housing consultation

This weekend, on behalf of Mebyon Kernow – the Party for Cornwall, I responded to the UK Government’s most recent consultation on housing.

Titled “Planning for the right homes in the right places,” the document sets out measures to “boost housing supply” and “increase local authority capacity to manage growth” – whatever that means. In particular, it proposes a “standard method” for calculating housing targets for local councils.

Over the last few years, I have often written about the process through which Cornwall Council devised its Local Plan (that includes a policy for 52,500 new properties during the period 2010-2030).

It has been well-documented that I made the case for a lower housing target and a greater focus on the provision of genuinely affordable housing for local people.

But it turned out that policy shifts from central government and input from a government inspector meant that fewer local-needs properties would be provided on developments while the housing target was increased.

The annual target is therefore 2,625 units but, in a number of recent years, fewer units have been built. This means that there has been “under-delivery” and, as a consequence, central government expects Cornwall to build even more properties to address this “backlog.”

I continue to be extremely frustrated at how Cornwall’s housing stock has been growing at a faster rate than almost all other parts of the United Kingdom and yet we are still under pressure from Whitehall to ratchet up the extent of development even further.

It is frankly unacceptable and I am saddened at how their new consultation even includes, council area by council area, the result of their calculation of an “indicative assessment of housing need” – removing, once and for all, any illusion that local councillors decide the extent of growth in their areas.

Their assessment would set an annual target of 2,889 – which would equate to a future target of 57,780 if spread over a twenty-year plan period.

However, the good news is that, as Cornwall Council has just adopted its Local Plan, the “new standardised method” would not come into effect immediately.

Nonetheless, this top-down imposition of a “standard” approach to housing growth would take decisions on planning policy even further away from local communities, and I do not believe that Government officials inside the M25 corridor know what is best for Cornwall and its people.

It remains my view that we need to see a Cornish National Planning Policy Framework, which would allow local people to bring forward more sustainable planning policies with development geared to meet local needs and defend the Cornish countryside.

[This is my article in this week's Cornish Guardian].