At Forest Heath’s Scrutiny Committee last night, we had a report on stakeholder involvement in a meeting in a meeting planned at Palace House Mews on the 14th December. 

We are forever hearing all those buzzwords about ‘Community buy-in’ and ’stakeholder involvement’  these are usually euphemisms for bringing in unelected people into a process and saying that an unpopular policy has some sort of community support.

I say what of the ‘unempowered’, ‘the too busy’ or ‘those that are generally happy with most things in live’.  So I suggested that we should ask people to come along and represent their street on something  that some streets in Newmarket will find incredibly important.  This idea was supported by the other councillors and the the lead Officer said he would ask the Consultants about this.

The Consultants reply went like this :- ‘This just leaves the last point - inviting a representative from each street.?Clearly it isn’t going to be feasible to invite every household in Newmarket, and in our experience, it is virtually impossible to find one individual in each street that will provide a viewpoint representative of that street. The stakeholder list we have compiled is very comprehensive…’

My view is if the venue isn’t big enough get a bigger venue, only those streets with a problem would send one.  So much for my idea on empowering people,  those people who are most affected still wont have a voice it seems.

The long awaited public enquiry to the dualling of the A11 between Fiveways and Thetford  is to go ahead on Tuesday 24th November at Elveden Village Hall  at 10 am.
I have supported calls from Objectors Proposal 1 which would mean that the A11 would move away from Barton Mills and  the Fiveways Roundabout.  I believe if this proposal is accepted then the A11 could be a road fit for purpose for the forseeable future.
The fact that the Highways Agency have back up plans for Traffic Lights at the Roundabout means they anticipate further congestion there.   Local Residents will the have to suffer elevated levels of noise, congestion and pollution to the area for years to come.’
The public enquiry website is www.persona.uk.com/a11fiveways

Last Night, we had a ‘Special Council’ at Forest Heath.  This was primarily to discuss Car parking charges in Newmarket.  My colleagues from Newmarket, Andrew Appleby and Ian Radford had been doing their homework on the range of options and spoke well.

Tory Cllr Millar spent most of the time making political points with such verbosity that Neil Kinnock would have been proud of him. 

We then waited with baited breath for what options the Tory ruling group were going to come up with or support given they supposedly run the Council.  Then the Tory leader got up and spoke and proposed we should study the options further!   Given that we were at a Special Council to discuss these options you would have thought the ruling group would have had something useful to say, unfortunately Cllr Miller was more intent on honing his Kinnock impression perhaps it just blew Cllr Jaggard away.

Perhaps it wasn’t surprising that the Turnip Taleban over the border in South west Norfolk got so het up about Liz Truss’s affair with a Tory MP several years ago that they didn’t even see anything wrong with some of the bizarre moments in her Lib Dem past.

I had a vague memory of a Lib Dem Youth and student initiated debate at party conference in the early 90s and a speech by a leading figure at the time demanding the end of the Monarchy (and a demand it was).  It most amused me to find out it was the never mourned for disappearing and reappearing in the Tory Party Liz Truss, Tory MP elect in SW Norfolk.  Alex Wilcock’s blogspot gives a recollection what local Tories might be facing here

Chloe Smith (Swaffham Girl) must be kicking herself for sure as egss are eggs with boundary changes she will lose Norwich North, if not in 2010 but the election after next when she had she but have waited, had the safe  for now seat of SW Norfolk.

The ruling Tory Group have placed James Waters on the Planning Committee.

The former Cllr Waters adjudication from the Standards Board can be found here.  

Last Night, The Conservatives held onto the Eriswell and Rows  Council seat previously held by now banned local Tory Councillor Terry Waters.  This was despite  a catastrophic drop of over 24% of their vote  share.  Ukip also saw their vote share half in the ward.   Lib Dem John Smith  polled just a touch under 40% but failed to take the seat by just 54 votes froma  standing start.   The new Councillor is Cllr Waters son, James. 

The by election appears to have been timed so that though the Standards Board adjudication was issued the day before poll its findings would not find its way into the local press before polling day. The findings of the Standards Board can be downloaded here

The result
Forest Heath DC, Eriswell & the Rows
Thursday 22 October 2009 12:00

Con 400 (45.8; -24.4)
LD John Smith 346 (39.6; +39.6)
UKIP 128 (14.6; -15.2)
Majority 54
Turnout 29.2%

Con hold
Percentage change is since May 2007.

At the Planning Committee of Forest Heath on the 14th October,  the draft Conservation area report for Freckenham was put out to consultation.

 The proposals can be found here,  not surprisingly buried deep inside the Forest Heath website:-  http://www3.forest-heath.gov.uk/minutes/pln/pln2009oct14/reports/pln09604%20Freckenham.pdf

 So if you want to make any comments or have objections please send them to Forest heath as soon as possible.

Over the past few weeks I have been going across ot Bedford to help an old Friend Dave Hodgson campaign for the Mayoralty of Bedford.   Bedford is one of only two places in the East of England to have a directly elected Mayoralty, the other being Watford.

As of Today, both now have Lib Dems Mayors.  Dave won after supplementary preferences were counted.  A great victory for Dave but more importantly for Bedford.  Dave has been an active campaigner in Bedford for many years and knows the area well.

The District Auditor signed off Forest Heath’s accounts last night but  not before making sure that there was a major amendment to the balance sheet.

That the £15 million that The Conservtive administartion had valued the centre at - that is what it cost them to build it.  This should be valued at £11 million.

 In effect the Auditor was saying that if the planning, and design process had been right then it should have cost at least £4 millionless to build and should have been significantly less than that as a completed building should have value added not value deducted.

Now a great leisure centre we do have  in Newmarket but what other great facilities could we have had that have been poured into this money pit had the building been built the correct way in the first place.  Could Brandon have had a new pool or Mildenhall a new Leisure Centre to replce the current one?

Last time the Council went to consultation less than 300 people in the District responded to this critical document that will define the next twenty years.   Councillors have not ‘approved’ these plans they have approved sending them out to the public for consultation. This really is your last chance. 

The plans propose to seal existing villages within their own boundaries. There will be no more natural gradual development of villages by adding a ‘close’ here and there on the edge of a village. There will be little opportunity for new jobs and shops in the countryside in villages defined as secondary villages, while Red Lodge faces being swamped with new housing. One third of Forest Heath residents live in the countryside but we can expect no matching jobs growth in these areas, which in practice is likely on past performance to be no more than less than 1 percent per annum.      If these plans and policies are endorsed by public inaction, Council planners, particularly central government planners and the Government Inspectorate won’t recognise the countryside as a sustainable working environment, and only concerted public action will preserve the rights of families to continue living generation by generation in their home villages. These plans will price housing in the countryside even further out of the reach housing for farm workers, public service workers, and others not earning high salaries who work in the countryside.   It will enforce environmentally damaging unsustainable travel across the district by blocking new jobs in the countryside, while making worse the congestion pollution in the towns.