Month: June 2015

I sit on the Local Plan committee and last Wednesday evening we had a briefing from council officers on this subject. They have certainly done a lot of work on this over several years and seem personally committed to delivering a plan for 12,000 houses to be built in Tendring over the net fifteen years. They even went so far as to explain that building houses on farmland is an environmentally friendly activity!

In summary; the rules of the game that we are being invited to play by, are that central government tells Tendring District Council how many houses to build and TDC decides where they are to be built. So much for the Conservative Party’s commitment to “Localism”. With a Conservative government in Westminster and a Conservative administration in Tendring , we have a fight on our hands.

I have a lot of learning to do, starting with where the “objectively assessed housing need” comes from. The rules stipulate that there must be an assessment done in line with the National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF). There is no suggestion that the 12,000 homes are required for the residents of Tendring. Indeed, the officers at the briefing were clear that the birth/death balance in Tendring is forecast to be essentially flat over the next fifteen years. The population increase is all coming from people moving into the district, almost entirely from outer London. These homes are not for you, they are for London overspill.

There are essentially two options; either to generate a plan in line with the NPPF, or . . . Not! If we do not have a plan then developers can apply to build anywhere and Tendring would not receive the Community Infrastructure Levy (CIL) that is payable by a developer when a Local Plan is in place. I have asked the council officers how CIL is calculated and what it has amounted to over recent years and await their reply. If we do have a plan in place then developers can only apply to build in those areas designated for that purpose, and provided they meet the requirements of the Local Plan they have to be accepted.

Those in favour of having a local plan say that builders will only apply to build house they can sell and that the rate of applications in the past has been around half of the 800 houses per year figure (12,000 houses over 15 years) that a Local Plan will require. So, these wizards say – “Let’s play the game and have a plan for 12,000 houses, it’s never going to happen in practice”. With 350 homes about to start near Gorse Lane industrial Estate and Persimmon applying to build 900 houses on Jaywick lane, I’m not so sure.

One thing you can be sure of is where they will mostly be built. The Conservative administration in Tendring has packed the Local Plan committee with a cabal of “Country Club” members, representing wards in Frinton and the rural fringe of the district. They have a 10-4 majority on this committee. Do not expect new homes to have a view of Frinton Golf Club!

Members of the Local Plan committee can be found here http://democracy.tendringdc.gov.uk/akstendring/users/public/admin/main.pl?op=ListCommitteeDetails&keyid=26 You can rely on the UKIP members and Joy Broderick from Holland Residents Group to oppose these houses. As for the rest, they need persuading.

I will let you know how this progresses.

I am away over the next month. Please bear with me.

Amongst the many emails that I receive as a councillor are the press releases from the TDC press office. I had not previously been aware of them, though they are all available at http://www.tendringdc.gov.uk/council/latest-council-news.
Some are also covered in The Gazette. Three struck me as particularly worth a mention.

First, was the announcement that we have an extra Blue Flag beach this year, with the addition of Walton’s Albion Beach. The beaches at Brightlingsea, Martello Bay (Clacton), Frinton and Dovercourt Bay all retained their Blue Flag awards. Having lived for many years in the North East of England where there are many beaches on the relatively sparsely populated Northumbrian coastline which do not have Blue Flag status, I find this particularly impressive. A sincere “Thank You” to all who have helped to deliver this.

Second, is the welcome reminder that the Aviva professional women’s tour will be back in Clacton in two weeks time. I believe this is part of the only multi-day women’s cycling event . . . “in the world”! As a UKIP councillor, I cannot but feel rather irritated that the TDC press release quotes of Cllr Mick Skeels, our new Leisure portfolio holder. The councillor who could rightly claim credit for this would be Cllr Mark Platt, but his replacement was part of the deal that saw Cllr Skeels defect from UKIP only days after being elected on that platform.

Finally, welcome news that the airshow performance list is looking stronger than ever this year. The Red Arrows will be with us on both days. The Chinook display team have been added to the show. And, we keep our fingers crossed that we can sign up the Vulcan as well. The only airshow on the East Coast is something we can be justly proud of.

Leading up to the recent elections there was some mean-spirited London-centric portrayal, in the national press, of Clacton as somehow “left behind”; and not just by Matthew Parris. I just can’t see where they get that from. Clacton is thriving!

At the election on May 7th the electors of Tendring District Council elected 22 UKIP councillors. The complete result was:

Conservative	23
UKIP	22
Labour	4
Holland Res Ass	3
Tendring 1st	1
Lib Dem	1
Independent	6

That left the Conservatives as the largest party, without overall control.

The UKIP group elected Mick Skeels as our group leader and he presented us with a proposal to join a “Grand Alliance”. That was voted down by the UKIP group. There are significant differences between UKIP and the Conservatives in terms of local policy. Not least on planning, where the last Conservative administration presented a plan for the full 12,00 houses.

It was only just before the council meeting on 26th May that it became clear that nine councillors had formed a new group called “Tendring UKIP”. They sat with the Conservatives, voting against the proposal of the UKIP councillor Mary Newton as Deputy Chairman. That seems to me to have been an error.

Today I am able to confirm that four have returned to UKIP and the other five have been suspended from the party. I would like it to have been possible for a way to be found to bring all nine renegades back into the UKIP fold. I wish electors to know that when they vote UKIP, they get UKIP. However, despite the mediation of regional UKIP officers that is not what has happened. Indeed, my understanding is that those who have not come back, did not wish to come back. How they can explain that to their constituents, is not clear to me.

I realise that the actions of the these nine councillors has caused considerable anger amongst UKIP supporters. Indeed, I have been personally lobbied to support the removal of all nine from the party. However, those returning are sincere in wanting to support the UKIP agenda on which they were elected and have had the courage to admit they made a mistake. We should be gracious enough to accept that and move on to the business of delivering for our constituents.

There is a further side to this, in that Councillor Stock was elected a leader of the council on 26th May. He has since announced his cabinet, which includes two renegade UKIP councillors. The six independent councillors also sit with the Conservatives and two of them have cabinet positions. This has been done whilst preserving six cabinet places for conservative councillors by increasing the size of the cabinet from seven to ten members. Given that each post comes with a payment of around £11,000 pa, the extra cost of this to the residents of Tendring District, over the four years of this council, is around £140,000. I wish to be generous, but I know of no good reason for spending money in this way.

To add insult to injury the previous holder of the Leisure Portfolio, who was re-elected on May 7th, was Cllr Platt. Mark is widely respected for the work he did, including bringing the Aviva Women’s Tour cycling to Tendring, whereas Cllr Skeels (formerly UKIP) has no evident knowledge or expertise in this area.