Eric Pickles takes the biscuit...well, all of them it seems!!

Image via Order of Truth

The Sunday Times reports that spending on biscuits, sandwiches, tea and coffee by the communities department increased to a total of nearly £60,000 last year. The paper says Eric Pickles' department has reported a "biscuit bill" of £57,026 for the first nine months of 2013, compared with £13,420 in the whole of 2012

What a surprise. Eric Pickles cuts Kirklees budget by 129 million pounds and affects the poorest and most vulnerable and he is stuffing his face on biscuits at the tax payers expense, leaving us to have to set up food banks so people can eat.

He must have an amazing constitution to be able to stomach that!

 

What is Provisional Open Land?

Just because we expect Tory MPs to speak with forked tongues, we should not rule out the fact that this time they are talking a load of rubbish because they don’t understand. One should expect more from a Barrister and Journalist (does anyone else find it ironic that our two Tory MPs come from professions that are only a smitten behind politicians in the public distrust stakes). But to be generous, few people do understand what POL is.

POL stands for Provisional Open Land. It may be a green field that has never been developed but it is not green belt. The last time that the allocation of land was decided, the UDP, Unitary Development Plan the council had to decide what land it wanted to see housing on, what land was reserved for Industry and what it wanted to see left undeveloped, to stop towns joining up, “Green Belt”. There are a few other designations, but understanding these will do for now. POL is the land that was decided would be developed when the allocations were used up and the decision as to when the land is deemed to be used up, is set down in planning law. The presumption was always that POL land would be developed, the only point in question was when?

 

Our Tory MPs seem to be saying that the Fat Controller is telling us to ignore the law, or to interpret it in a way that is not set out in statute. He is not telling us he will pick up the bill when his inspector awards costs against the council for not obeying his law. He is not saying he is willing to change the law, what he is saying is, I will cover up the mess he has created by making announcements then not doing what I said I will do.

 

The Planning Inspectors work for Eric, they impose his will, he can over rule any decision they make as a result of a public enquiry on a whim. He can make his decision behind closed doors and does not have to give a reason, raising the question, should one person have so much power? It is said that Power Corrupts and that Absolute Power corrupts Absolutely.  

Summary comments to the media are;

1. The Pickles letter does not contain anything new, the council cannot arbitrarily use the latest ONS data set to pluck out of the air a lower housing number to get under the five year supply rule.

2. The five year supply is based on the latest tested housing numbers i.e. the UDP and Planning Inspectors will not accept any other data set.

3. Future numbers in the LDF will be based on delivery, ONS population growth, migration and economic growth, these will tie in with neighbouring authorities.

4. The lack of a LDF is due to government prevarication on the abolition of RSS and that the Inspector insisted that Kirklees council apply the previous RSS figures in the LDF Core Strategy.

5. Reevel campaigned for abolition of the LDF, so in effect the POL sites would be at risk, if Reevel had delivered on his election pledge.

6. Reevel is misleading local people and should lobby government to reduce the five year rule to three years.

National Planning Framework: We have no choice...

"Since the new national planning framework came into force last year, the 10 largest “unplanned” housing developments that councils across the country have refused have all been overturned on appeal, leaving councils to pick up the very substantial costs and potentially losing Government bonus grant.

“The Secretary of State and planning inspectors have allowed development on green field sites even when this is in an area of outstanding natural beauty, so even these cannot prevent the approval of new housing developments.

“At a time when we must find £22 million of cuts by 2016 due the deepest cuts in local government grant in 70 years, we cannot risk public funds in such a way. It would be akin to a gambler putting all their life savings on a three legged donkey in a very long field of thoroughbreds  – the chance of success is virtually zero, the costs very high.

“We have no choice but carry out the instruction of government or face a very big legal bill. If people don’t like this they should take this up with their MP and the Government, not the Council.”

No, not Kirklees, Telford Council. It appears that the Fat Controller is sticking his snout in everywhere!

Related Articles:
Anger as Skelmanthorpe residents left alone by Kirklees Council to fight planning inquiry (Huddersfield Examiner)
Local Development Framework: The strange case of Pickles' “letter” to Reevell
Denby Dale Planning Issues: an update from Cllr Graham Turner
Planning Issues in Denby Dale: Piggeries and Pilling Lane

Local Development Framework - Eric Pickles's Mess!

(Picture via the Morley Observer)

There is only one person responsible for the mess we are now in – Eric (I hate the North) Pickles.

Not Grant Shapps, who said before the election “If elected we will scrap LDF”. Not even the Under Minister who had secret meetings with KKAN (the not in anyone’s back yard pressure group), who told them you build as few houses as you want. And defiantly not Simon Reevell, who said “there will be no Local Development Framework” after all he is a lawyer so his concept of reality is different to ordinary people.

No, the fault is well and truly nestled in the ample body of Eric Pickles.

Eric said, soon after the election that he would scrap the targets for house building set in the RSS. Kirklees Council (all groups in agreement) took the decision to delay the submission of their plan until after the abolition of the targets, to allow for a smaller number of houses. Unfortunately Eric took over 2 years to fulfil his pledge to abolish the targets. In the meantime, with later consequences, he introduced a “Duty to Consult”. This was very late in the process.

So when Eric eventually got round to abolishing the targets, Kirklees submitted their plan. This was against the officers’ advice that there was a high risk that the Inspector would say there were not enough houses, and even with that warning the Conservative Group wanted an even lower target.

Also in the meantime, Eric changed the rules of how councils were funded; the only way that Councils could raise income to pay for its services, was to build more houses. True to form houses built in the South paid them twice as much money than houses built in the North.

Now we come to “Eric’s Inspector”. He, as our Officers predicted, decided we did not have enough houses in our plan. Rather than saying this clearly, obviously not wishing to expose his master’s duplicity, he tried to hide his views with nonsensical arguments around the “Duty to Consult”. What he is saying is that the fact that we moved away from the Targets, unlike other West Yorkshire Authorities, is evidence that we did not consult. Remember we did exactly the same consultation as Leeds, who has been deemed to have consulted properly. This is ignoring the fact that when we allegedly, did not consult, there was no duty to consult.

So now that we have no plan (the one that the Conservatives were going to abolish),local Conservative MPs  have a private meeting with Eric, to cobble together a statement that makes it look like they want to build less houses, to try to pin the blame on Kirklees for the mess engineered by Eric and Eric alone.

We should be asking him to come clean and tell us how many houses he wants us to build, rather than pose with objectors for Conservative leaflets and, rather than have secret meetings, he should spell out publicly what target he is setting us.