Golphin Farm, St Austell

At County Hall tonight, I attended the latest meeting of Central Sub-Area Planning to address the committee on the Golphin Farm application in St Austell.

The proposal from WainHomes proposed 107 new properties on land on the north side of St Austell. The site is outside of the development envelope of the town and lies within Treverbyn Parish. The case for the developer was that it should be approved as St Austell does not have a ‘five year land supply’ as sought by central government. Because the Council had failed to determine the application within the requisite time-frame, the applicant had gone to appeal and the Committee had to decide whether or not to contest the appeal.

The officer’s report recommended that we did not. It stated that there was only a 3.9 year land supply based on the present (unadopted) version of the Regional Spatial Strategy which wishes to see a ridiculous amount of housing imposed on the St Austell area. I used the meeting to challenge the officer’s approach to calculating the housing trajectory and his unwillingness to challenge the RSS figures or to consider other options. It got very technical!

In the report, the St Austell area was deemed to include St Blazey, Par and Tywardreath – but not any of the China Clay parishes, including the one that the site was located within!

It was also clear that the report was not seeking to apply policies relevant to Treverbyn Parish, but were uncritically applying policies produced for St Austell. The developer was offering 40% affordable housing, for example, as you would expect within St Austell – not the 50% that policies specify in Treverbyn Parish or the 100% affordable housing that can sometimes be achieved on land outside of development envelopes.

With a further Wainhomes application having already been submitted in this area for 1,300 new properties and over 2,500 new properties planned in the so-called eco-town just to the north, I think there was real concern about the scale of development that could happen in this area.

The councillors voted – I think it was unanimous – to contest the appeal.

The lack of an accommodation strategy

This morning, I attended a meeting of Cornwall Council’s Cabinet and spoke on an item entitled “Office Accommodation Vision.” I was not impressed with the report and said so!

In short, the report stated that an accommodation strategy would be “built around a hub and spoke model with three main hubs created in Bodmin, Camborne and Truro with satellite offices across the remainder of the county.” It added that the 78 existing offices would be reduced to thirty, though there was no detail.

The main focus of the report was to agree refurbishments and improvements at New County Hall in Truro and Dolcoath Road, Camborne, and to agree the development of a business case for a new office set-up in Bodmin.

I asked a number of questions. What was the overall vision? What offices would be closed and which ones would be kept in use? Which services would be based in which offices?

As an example, I asked about planning. There are three planning areas but it is still being run from six former district council offices. My questions were whether this would continue or whether planners would in the future be primarily based at three offices. And if this was the case, which offices they would be.

I specifically asked about the St Austell offices, identified as important in the St Austell Strategic Investment Framework, and their future. Those of us who used to be Restormel councillors understood would it be a hub for the central area, with Truro as the main centre.

All the people who were present at the meeting will confirm that I got no meaningful responses to my questions.

Happy New Year to one and all

The break is over and I am back at the “day job” at County Hall.

The first week of January saw (as much as the snow allowed) a series of scrutiny meetings to assess the administration’s draft budget. I could not get in everyday, but did manage to attend two of the scrutiny meetings.

As a back-bencher, I have been quite critical of the budget-setting process so far. We have had to sit through a number of briefings where we were asked to identify our “priorities” while not being presented with the necessary background or financial information on which to base a meaningful discussion.

There was more information available for the scrutiny meetings, but still not enough. There was question after question about what was planned and a lack of clarity as to how "savings" might be made. I raised concerns that there was an expectation that certain parts of the budget would experience a reduction in expenditure of 7-10% for each of the next four years. When I asked how and where the savings were expected to come from, the most frequent response was that this was still being worked out.

As a representative of the China Clay Area, I queried why there was still capital expenditure identified for the construction of the incinerator – but not for the potential termination of the waste contract. I was told that this was because the decision whether to terminate or not had yet to be taken. Strange that, as the possibility of fortnightly waste collections was noted even though the decision on that had not been made either.

I also made representations on the issue of community grants to ensure local groups could still get decent levels of financial support, I spoke against unfair increases in council charges and in a range of other areas. More updates soon.

A two-tier democracy

The announcement that Gordon Brown, David Cameron and Nick Clegg will take part in three televised debates during the next General Election demonstrates that there really is a two-tier democracy in the UK.

The SNP and Plaid Cymru are right to be angry as it puts them at an enormous disadvantage, with these high-profile debates focussing attention on the three largest London-centred parties and only the three largest London-centred parties.

Many members of the Labour Party, Conservative Party and Liberal Democrats are already lining up to criticise Alex Salmond for his threat to take legal action on behalf of the SNP. But they would, wouldn’t they? They want to stop other parties getting fair coverage during the election period.

There is talk of single televised debates in Scotland and Wales, but these will almost certainly not include Brown, Cameron and Clegg. And the media will consequently downplay their significance as a result.

As for MK - the same media outlets are refusing to allow us a single parliamentary broadcast and ... oh, how I could go on!

Six months in - the stats

It has been just over six months since I was elected to Cornwall Council. I think now is the time to report back on my performance – statistics wise.

My role as a councillor has been full-time and then some. I have undertaken no other paid work during this period. The Council website presently records that I have an attendance record of 92%.

The stats show that since June, there have been 29 meetings of the various committees that I sit on. Of these, I have attended 24. There were three meetings that I could not attend as I was at another Cornwall Council meeting at the same time (recorded as “apologies due to council business.”) The remaining two meetings that I missed were of the Strategic Planning Committee (dealing with Binhamy Farm, Bude and the Davidstow wind turbine applications). In both these cases, I had given archaeological advice on the applications in my former role as an employee of the Historic Environment Service of Cornwall County Council. I therefore had a prejudicial interest and would not have been able to participate in the debate.

I feel I could legitimately claim to have a 100% attendance record.

As MK Group Leader, I have also set out to attend meetings of certain committees of which I am not a member in order to better understand how the Council operates. The records show that I have attended 17 such meetings in this period (recorded as “in attendance” in the stats) – the fourth highest figure for a councillor.

But this is not in any way the full picture. For all councillors, there are numerous extra meetings, briefings and informal gatherings that are not deemed ‘official’ meetings and therefore not counted.

To take last week as an example, I attended the Waste Panel on Monday (counted) and then spent three days at a Public Inquiry (not counted). In the previous week, I was at three official meetings – Full Council, Planning Policy Panel and the Central Sub-Area Planning Committee. Informal meetings included a scrutiny session on the budget process, a meeting of councillors from the China Clay Area about the eco-town and a briefing on the Council’s plans for carbon reduction. For information (and/or sympathy), extras included two meetings about the upcoming Public Inquiry into the Incinerator, a Parish Council meeting, a meeting of the board of ClayTAWC and I finished off the week with a gathering of MK’s National Executive.

There is also, of course, the challenge of addressing issues from local parishioners when not stuck in meeetings.