In my dealings with the council there is often a sense of
Alice in Wonderland, and my latest dealings with them are no exception.
This particular rabbit hole related to scrutiny and cabinet
decisions, I wasn’t happy about some aspects of the last Thursdays cabinet
decision relating to The Royal Sands development on The Pleasurama site in
Ramsgate, so I thought I would ask for the decision to be called in.
My understanding here is that the council have an overview
and scrutiny panel, this is made up of councillors who are not cabinet members
and one of their functions is to call in cabinet decisions for review. Now
obviously the councillors are representatives of us the Thanet ward
constituents, also there is a good chance that none of your ward councillors is
a member of this panel. It further follows that there must be some way that us
the electors and council taxpayers must have some way of initiating this call
in process. Anyway after trying and failing on the councils website, to find a
form, I had a look at the new localism act and this seems to say that yes
councils should set up some way so that it is possible to initiate a call in.
further googling showed that a lot of councils have some sort of process
whereby the electorate can use this panel of councillors that are supposed to
represent them.
Thanet District Council don’t seem to have any system on
their website for initiating a call in, so in the end I started emailing the
individual members of the panel using the contact details on the council’s
website. If you have any doubts about how difficult this sort of thing is, go
onto the council’s website http://www.thanet.gov.uk
and try and find who is on this panel from the homepage.
Anyway I started to email the individual councillors thus:
“Hi ***, there are a couple of aspects relating to the Royal Sands
decision that I am not entirely happy about, so I am approaching you as a
member of scrutiny in the hope of getting the decision called in.
As the last date for call in is the 3rd August and I have never requested the
call in of a decision, so don’t know what the procedure is or even if it is
possible, so I need your help.
Primarily I am concerned that since the planning application for
the Royal Sands was approved the site has been designated by the Environment
Agency as “high flood risk” this designation relates storm flooding and damage
during a combination of high tide and storm.
My understanding is that during the closed cabinet meeting some
cabinet and shadow cabinet members attempted to get a flood risk assessment
included in the re negotiation of the development agreement. I am not sure, but
I don’t think they were successful, difficult to properly assess when this sort
of decision is made in a closed meeting.
I don’t think the issue of the safety of the residents of a new
Thanet development should be something discussed in closed session, the problem
has been outlined by The Environment Agency, this link takes you to their
letter about it http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/ea/id2.htm
The other aspect although of much less importance that the safety
of local residents may also be of interest, and this is that the process of
disposing of the site from the 199 year leases issued in 2006 to the sale of
the freehold now don’t seem to have been subject to the normal asset disposal
process.
Best regards Michael”
Well I got to Jodie Hibbert and found there were no contact
details for her and gave up.
The next day I though as this is an important issue I would
contact the officer in charge of the panel, only to be told he was on leave
until after the call in deadline.
So the I decided I would
email the chief executive, here is the email
“Subject; The system the council has for triggering a call
in
Good afternoon Sue, me again I’m afraid, this time it’s the
cabinet decision to go ahead with The Royal Sands without a flood risk
assessment.
As you are probably aware the Environment Agency wrote to the
council strongly recommending a flood risk assessment in Feb 2008 and in the
period during which the new development agreement has been negotiated I have
tried to persuade officers and cabinet members to insist that this basic safety
precaution in part of the new agreement.
I think the key issues here are that when the planning application
was approved the building was to have been founded on driven piles into the
bedrock, the subsequent cliff survey said that this wouldn’t be safe because of
the vibration, so the developer agreed to use bored piles into the bedrock,
this was subsequently changed in 2010 to shallow foundations on sand that is
behind an 1860 sea defence, without any maintenance or survey record.
In layman’s terms, the development is next to the sea, founded on
sand and isn’t screwed down.
Anyway information is slowly leaking my way about the secret part
of last weeks cabinet meeting, to the effect that councillors asked for a flood
risk assessment and officers told them that they couldn’t have one.
As the site is an EA designated high risk flood zone, meaning that
any new development constructed on it without a flood risk assessment will be
to a greater or lesser degree be blighted and in view of the cabinet and shadow
cabinet members request, I considered this sufficient grounds for a call in.
I then tried to grapple with the council’s call in procedure, I
tried emailing members of scrutiny sent the following to;
Councillor Ian Driver (Chairman)
and
Councillor Neil Hornus
Councillor Thomas King
Councillor Mrs Julie Marson
Councillor Pat Moore
Councillor David Saunders
Councillor William Scobie
Councillor Michael Tomlinson
Councillor John Watkins
***the email is already above so I have scrubbed it out here***
Then I got to Councillor Jodie Hibbert, no email address was
published on the council’s website so I tried democratic services, it seems
that the officer who runs the scrutiny committee is on leave until after the
call in date.
I gather that the localism bill makes provision for councils to
publish there own system for a member of the public or a local group to trigger
a call in, but neither the council’s website nor the officers I have spoken to
seem to be clear about this.
Could you please
let me know what if any system the council has for triggering a call in and in
this instance either ensure that the decision is called in or provide me with
some reason why it won’t be?
Best regards Michael”
I didn’t, still haven’t got any reply from the chief executive,
perhaps she is on leave too.
I did get an email from the officer who was supporting the
development at cabinet.
Here it is:
“Michael
I understand that you have been in contact with the Council's
Democratic Services section in relation to call in procedures following
Cabinet.
I also understand that you have left your number in relation to a
potential call from me in relation to this issue, but I think it more
appropriate to email.
Clearly I cannot provide specific advice in relation to call in
arrangements as this is not my area of expertise, though I understand the
arrangements for this have been explained by the officer to whom you spoke.
On the specifics of this issue, despite our long conversation in
relation to flood risks, I am not going to instigate a call in for this item on
this basis. I know your arguments in relation to this issue, as you set them
out eloquently to me the other day, but even with this in mind I do not think
it appropriate for me to seek a call in in relation to my own report.
Mark”
Obviously the bloke who wrote the cabinet report is about the
least appropriate council officer to call the thing in, so I emailed him thus:
“Mark my assumption is that it would be highly inappropriate for
you to ask for a call in on an issue where you were the advising officer.
The substance of my phone call to democratic services was that I
had been trying to email all the members of scrutiny tying to obtain assistance
in initiating a call in when I got to Jodie Hibbert whose email address wasn’t
published on the council website, so I phoned democratic services.
I was told that the officer supporting the scrutiny group was on
leave until after the call in date, that the officer who I spoke to didn’t know
the criteria for and didn’t know how a member of the public initiated a call in
and that an officer who did know would call me back.
My guess is that no one knows the rules under the localism act and
so it landed on your desk.
Best regards Michael”
In the meantime I have received replies from two of the members of
scrutiny I contacted, one from the chair, who we shall call Goldmember in the
circumstances.
And one from a lady member, both are now trying to get the
decision called in.
The reason that I want the thing called in is the flood
assessment issue and frankly the underlying problem here is trying to get the
officers, members of the last Conservative Cabinet and now members of this new
Labour Cabinet understand that this is a fundamental safety issue and the only
person qualified to comment on it is the Environment Agency’s technical
specialist.
My attempts to communicate this to current cabinet members
seem to roughly rebound as though it is me and not a qualified expert calling
for this, and as though the experts in the field are the council officers, who
as far as I understand have no related qualifications.
Back in 2008 after I had read the EAs letter I discussed
this with one of the senior council officers who was in charge of the
department dealing with the Pleasurama development. He implied that the EAs engineer
was young and female and so I shouldn’t put much credence in what she had
written, so I got Laura Sandys who was meeting with the most senior EA officer
for the southeast to ask them for the official EA position, here is the quote
from her email to me, saying what these EA officers had to say.
"The
Pleasurama development gained planning consent prior to the publication of
the latest government guidance on development and flood risk, PPS25. When
we were consulted in 2003 our floodplain maps did not show the site to be
at risk and the design, at that stage, had clear evacuation routes to the
top of the cliff. But, having received revised plans for the development last
year, we highlighted our concern over flood risk and recommended that a
site-specific flood risk assessment be undertaken. This would inform
appropriate mitigation measures such as recommended floor
levels, flood resilient design and an evacuation plan to ensure that
the development is made as safe as possible."
I will ramble on here.
