News roundup week ending 29 March

There hasn’t really been a lot of local news this last week.  An entire issue of the Herald has managed without a single story or letter about “fury”, “woes” or “anger”, about parking or indeed anything else.
 

Perhaps this is explained by the news that Waverley Borough has been found in a survey by the Halifax to “enjoy the highest standards of living in rural Britain”.
 

 

Mind you, the Herald did manage to get in one reference to parking – in this item about the decision by Waverley Councillor Vorley to defect from the Tories.

 

I do have my own concerns about the huge imbalance in the representation on Waverley Council.  Not because they are 95% Tory, although I don’t share their philosophy, and certainly not because of any alleged arrogance or high-handedness, which I absolutely do not see, in fact it is their accusers in the “Haslemeres” plural who live in glass houses and should not throw stones.  But it is not healthy for the council to have no effective opposition, or for the majority of borough residents who voted either LibDem or Labour at the last elections to have no representation at all.
 

The Surrey Advertiser reports that human remains have been found, under a car park in Godalming, during groundworks for new affordable homes.  Rumours that the remains are of the proprietor of Woodie & Morris,  whose response to Surrey County Council’s announcement of the Petworth Road zebra crossing, was to tweet “Over My Dead Body” because she would prefer three parking spaces to a safe place for her customers to cross the road, are believed to be unfounded.
 

Oh, and Councillor Stephen Mulliner managed to get a letter in the Herald last week, about his vote against an increase in Waverley councillors’ allowances, and his intention not to take them personally, for the second time – a verbatim replica of a letter published only a few weeks ago.  In electioneering mode already evidently!
 

 

 

On the subject of Democracy, we are in for rather a lot of that, such as it is, in the coming two months.

Haslemere Town Council is holding an open meeting at the Georgian Hotel on Monday, April 29, at 7pm where you can hear presentations on the work of the council – that should be a short one, a hundred grand of staff and admin costs to arrange few Christmas lights and grass cutting on Lion Green - and have the opportunity to meet your local councillor. Let’s hope yours isn’t Stephen Mulliner.  Of four meetings of the Amenities Committee last year, Councillor Mulliner attended one, so will he actually turn up?

 

Haslemere & Villages Vision has issued an invitation to join them at an open day on Saturday, April 27, where you can tell them your ideas for improving the town.  Just like the 100 or so people who attended their last meeting in September, when they were the Haslemere Neighbourhood Planning Forum, from which there has been nothing to indicate what was discussed at that meeting, rumour has it because the peoples’ ideas did not fit with the priorities of the organisers.

 

I wrote a letter to the Herald last week.  They didn’t print it.  Here it is:

Dear Sir

So, there it is. “Haslemere & Villages Vision” (née Haslemere Hub) has launched. According to its Mission Statement it is “a non-political, community-led forum. Its object is to enable the people and organisations of Haslemere and adjacent villages to pool ideas and resources to create a vision and a plan of how we wish the town and the villages to develop in the future. It will undertake and deliver projects that preserve and enhance the wellbeing of the town and the villages for the benefit of all who live work and play here.”

Now, if this genuinely means that it will seek wide support from the whole population of the town, and will listen to what they have to say, and not just sweep under the carpet the bits which are not convenient or don’t fit the ideas they already have, then I welcome it.

But that, I fear, is a Big “If”.

The front page article in last week’s Herald features a photograph, of six volunteers showcasing the Photographic competition. Of those six, I can recognise two as being leading figures in the “Haslemere Action Group” Against the Parking Proposals – probably the most divisive special interest group to have blighted this town in many years. A group which has sought to steamroller over the legitimate wishes and interests of several hundred residents who live in town-centre roads blighted by all-day parking by commuters, especially those using the railway station. Which did not consider it necessary to engage with those residents who had been petitioning, in some cases for years, for relief from the difficulty or even impossiblility of parking anywhere near their own homes thanks to incomers whose only connection with the town was to use the railway station and who are not even resident in the County, let alone the town. Which simply objected to every proposal advanced by Surrey and Waverley’s Local Area Committee, of whatever nature, down to lobbying against zebra crossings and for the dangerous practice of nose-in parking on the high street. Which even now fights a rear-guard action to have the schemes about to be introduced terminated at the earliest possible date. Which has – so far – successfully lobbied against a solution which would have worked reasonably satisfactorily for the residents of Beech Road and patients attending outpatient appointments at the Hospital. In short, a group which is loathed by a significant number of people, as has been demonstrated in your letters pages before.

A third is “President” of the Haslemere Society. A body with a membership of a few hundred at most, but which assumes to itself the right to pass judgement on all that occurs, or is proposed, in this town of 16,000 inhabitants. Which appears to oppose almost everything – the siting of a new library a few years ago so that we still don’t have a proper library, a multi-storey car park which they now join in citing as the solution to our parking problems and so a reason for inaction now, individual residential planning applications which are none of their concern.

In its previous incarnation as Haslemere Hub, this group hosted a meeting last September, attended by about 100 people. All of the time and effort contributed by those people has so far resulted in – precisely nothing. Their website has no new entries since last October – no minutes, no proposals, nothing. Apparently some 20 or so people continue the work, so what happened to the other 70 or more? Did they not agree with the Vision?

As a leaflet which has today appeared under the windscreen wipers of cars parked around the station shows, Haslemere & Villages Vision is willing to acknowledge publicly that it is allied with these groups, further implying that it has adopted a partisan stance.

I think these people have already made up their minds, and will not be needing your opinions.

Yours etc

I bumped into the eminence grise  behind HAVV on the train the other day - he is my next-door neighbour - and he was keen to involve me, apparently.  He did say that HAVV is not aiming to achieve consensus, because that is just the lowest common denominator and that way nothing happens.  Prima facie, I would say that he is right about that, but vigilance will be required to ensure that this does not translate into the views of those "Haslemeres" prevailing against contrary views of the residents at large.

 

Candidates for the Surrey County Council elections will soon be confirmed.  In Haslemere, Stephen Mulliner is succeeding Steve Renshaw, who is standing down, as the Conservative candidate.   I have no information on the candidates for Labour or the LibDems, however the Haslemere parking action group is fielding a twin candidacy by Alan “Howling Laud” Hope and his deceased feline companion Cat Mandu, and the Monster Raving Loony Party candidate will  apparently be Nikki Barton – I think I might have got those last two the wrong way round.

If Steven Mulliner is elected to Surrey, that means he will be in all three levels of local government.  It seems to me that this raises questions of conflicts of interest – certainly  HTC has been at daggers drawn with Surrey/Waverley for some time, especially over the car parking issue.  I question where he is going to find the time to do all three rôles properly, but I think the answer is – he won’t.  His attendance record at HTC is not scintillating – he missed three of four meetings of the Amenities Committee last year and didn’t attend all full council meetings either  – and a request to Waverley for details of his attendance at their meetings elicited the following response from Waverley “Democratic Services”:

Cllr Stephen Mulliner Attendance

2011-12 Attendance

- Full Council – 2 out of 8

- Corporate Overview and Scrutiny – 5 out of 8

- Joint Planning Committee – 1 out of 1

- Area Planning Committee (Southern) – 6 out of 10

- Audit Committee – 4 out of 4

2012-13 Attendance (up to 26 March 2013)

 

- Full Council – 2 out of 6

- Corporate Overview and Scrutiny – 3 out of 6

- Area Planning Committee (Southern) – 6 out of 9

- Audit Committee – 4 out of 5

And finally,

 

The ground work for the Petworth Road zebra crossing is coming along nicely, much to the chagrin of the proprietors of Woodie & Morris.  A new smaller layby has been installed outside Haslemere Travel, the kerb has been built out close to the junction outside Sports Locker, and the road has been resurfaced, but the “piano key” markings and beacons are yet to come.  Looking forward to it!

 

An exchange of views with haslemere parking dot com

This is an exchange of emails with the “Volunteer Editor” of Haslemere parking dot com [I won’t provide the link – you can figure it for yourself if you want to].  I have reversed the normal arrangement whereby you have to read upwards from the bottom, and started with the article on their website which started the conversation.

The masthead of this website use to state “An open, sensible and democratic forum…..”.  Curiously, that strapline has now vanished!

Revealed: What @SurreyCouncil cabinet did at taxpayer funded Farnham Castle visits

15/03/2013

By Editor

From This Is Surrey: Revealed: What Surrey County Council cabinet did at taxpayer funded Farnham Castle visits. By Michael Davies michael.davies@essnmedia.co.uk, Thursday, March 14, 2013

THREE-COURSE dinners, sweets and special delegate stationary were just some of the commodities senior Conservative county councillors enjoyed when they used more than £10,000 of taxpayers’ money to host conferences at Farnham Castle.

Last month the team of top cabinet Tories, including leader David Hodge and chief executive David McNulty, were slammed by the public and opposition after the Mirror revealed they had spent £10,691.40 for three overnight stays – including one last November which cost £4,989.60.Council leader David Hodge and deputy Peter Martin, who were both at the Farnham Castle workshops.

And while the council cabinet remained silent on what happened at the residential “away days”, following a Freedom of Information request, the Mirror can now reveal what public money was spent on.

Among the team-building activities council members participated in during conferences at the 900-year-old castle – which cost £160 a head plus VAT – were a practice session on listening, a practice session on coaching, scenario planning to 2017, and a session on innovation myth-busting.

They also took part in several “walk-and-talk” sessions, which involved members walking around talking about issues they don’t normally deal with. The leader of the council also presented his five-year plan, although this has not been made public. During the final visit made last year, when the council spent the most amount of money at the castle, the meetings involved long-term financial planning for the county.

Opposition parties slammed the cabinet for using public money on the trips when the meetings could have taken place in council buildings.

“It’s ironic that the conservative leadership at Surrey County Council spent council taxpayers’ money on learning how to listen,” said Lib Dem opposition leader Hazel Watson. “It doesn’t take advanced listening skills to know Surrey residents don’t want to use their hard-earned money on overnight trips to castles in Surrey for the Conservative cabinet.”

Graham Wildridge, who is standing for Labour in the Earlswood and Reigate South ward at the upcoming county council elections, added: “Surrey needs a Labour voice to hold the lazy, arrogant, and complacent Conservative majority to account. It is perfectly proper that county councillors have good training for the jobs they do. But lesson number one is how to do it for the lowest cost.”

Council spokeswoman Joy Ridley said: “We use our own buildings as a first choice but every once in a while we need to meet elsewhere.

“This allows us to take a step back, carefully plan ahead and continue to develop the plans that have already led to millions of pounds of savings for the benefit of Surrey taxpayers.”

The council had planned a return trip to the council this year but has since cancelled it, stating “it is not the most suitable venue”.

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________________________________________________________________________________________________-
From: M, Paul (UK – London)
Sent: 22 March 2013 4:28 PM
To: Aine Hall
Subject:

Aíne

For some unaccountable reason, the comment I posted on your website last week in response to your post about Surrey CC leaders’ junkets at Farnham castle doesn’t seem to have made it onto your site, so just in case it got lost in the ether, here it is again:

I too would have some concerns about the leaders of Surrey Council holding “awaydays” at establishments such as Farnham Castle. This is not so much because I believe such events to be invariably a waste of time – all large organisations, including the one I work for, hold such events regularly and my experience of them is mixed, some worthwhile, some not. I would want to look at what was actually delivered as a result of the meeting.

The report tells us that the expenditure in the year was about £11,000, which is a drop in the ocean of Surrey’s multi-billion budget.

It is also less than one item of expenditure by Haslemere Town Council – the Visitor Information Centre at the museum for which HTC pays a grant of circa £14k pa – which has come under some scrutiny lately. In the minutes of the Finance & Audit Committee for 6^th March, it is reported that Councillor Stephen Mulliner said “that it must be determined whether the VIC has a function of any value. If not it should be disbanded.”

The papers for the recent full council meeting of HTC included a report on the Visitor Information Centre, as appendix 6. To quote verbatim, “The topic under discussion was the lack of demonstrable community value of the current grant paid to the Haslemere Museum for the running of the Haslemere Vistor Information Center.” This report identified the issues raised by the situation with the VIC including the following:

“Current Issues Raised by the Working Group.

i) Analysis of the VIC published statistics reveals them to be broadly meaningless in terms of assessing HTC value for money and community benefits.

ii) There is no transparent employee time management system, such as weekly time sheets or monitored weekly deliverables.

iii) HTC do not have a complete list of tasks undertaken by the VIC on behalf of HTC.

iv) HTC do not allocate work to the VIC. The VIC staff determine their own workload independently and inform HTC on a quarterly basis.

v) VIC ‘accounts’ are not transparent as they are embedded into the museum accounts.

Being, as I am, from an accountancy background, I have asked HTC to state what concrete actions have been taken, or have been agreed to implementation, to address these issues and to improve the financial accountability and transparency of the VIC. I look forward to their response.

Time has moved on and I do now have a response, which I need to mull over.

Kind regards,

 

From: Aine Hall

Sent: 22 March 2013 16:42
To: M, Paul (UK - London)
Cc: [Name redacted]
Subject: RE:

All comments are moderated.

The parking blog is not the forum for comments about the Haslemere Visitor Centre.

I see no link between parking and the management of the Haslemere Visitor Centre.

I have cced [redacted]  who may be able to help.

 

 rom: M, Paul (UK - London)

Sent: 22 March 2013 4:56 PM
To: Aine Hall
Cc: [Redacted]
Subject: RE:

You posted an article about alleged prodigality by the Cabinet of Surrey County Council on your website, which is ostensibly about parking in Haslemere.

You evidently see a link between three course meals enjoyed by county councillors at Farnham castle and parking in Haslemere.

The comment was pertinent to the article you posted, if not to parking in Haslemere.

There is a difference between moderation and censorship.

 

From: Aine Hall

Sent: 22 March 2013 16:58
To: M, Paul (UK - London)
Cc: [Name redacted]
Subject: RE:

Editor’s decision is final

 

From: M, Paul (UK - London)

Sent: 22 March 2013 5:06 PM
To: Aine Hall
Cc: [Redacted]
Subject: RE:

I think you mean referee.
I am fond of quoting a saying of Voltaire, taken as a quote from the judgement delivered by the court of appeal in the Associated Portland Cement case:
"The poet Voltaire, who had a certain dislike of sham, once remarked that the Holy Roman Empire was neither Holy, nor Roman nor an Empire".
You use three words on your masthead. I think perhaps much the same could be said of those.

News roundup week ending 22 March 2013

Haslemere Town Council has submitted an objection to a planning application by developers to demolish a Victorian villa at 34 Kings Road, and replace it with a block of flats with parking spaces.  Generally speaking their grounds for objection seem eminently sensible:  destruction of an attractive period property to be replaced by some carbuncle; insufficient off-street parking potentially creating additional pressure on on-street parking in Kings Road.  There is one argument however which I found quite amusing – they cite the road danger arising from the design of the off-road parking spaces which would lead to cars reversing out into the street.

Curiously, they didn’t think this consideration at all important when applied to the “echelon parking” arrangements outside Costa in the High Street, and Shepherds Hill where – oops! – parked cars have to reverse into a busy road!

As advertised last week, Haslemere Action Group in conjunction with Haslemere Society, Vision  and Chamber of Trade, has been leafleting cars parked around the station urging them to object to WBC’s application under s38 of the Commons Act for permission to do resurfacing works on the Fairground car park.  Here is a photo of their leaflet.

One of the contributors to the HAG website – presumably a supporter, as they apparently won’t register anyone they recognise as an opponent on their “open, sensible and democratic forum*” – contributed the following nugget, which HAG posted without any apparent sense of irony:

The WBC application for consent from the Secretary of State is with regards to works on Common Land. Any objections should therefore be based on the fact that the barriers, fencing, re-cycling bins, parked cars etc prevent members of the public from using the Common.
The fact that it is an area of Common land means that EVERYONE has a right of access at all times [24/7 365 days of the year] for air and excercise on foot and on horseback under Section 193 of the Law of Property Act 1925.
WBC should be protecting this area of Common Land and not developing it.
WBC state in Q28 of the application that the “Off Street Parking Places Order 2012″ applies to the Fairground car-park. This states that persons cannot, without permission, tether, drive or ride any animal or undertake any recreational activity. This contradicts the rights under the Law of Property Act 1925 that apply to this area of Common.

A peek at the draft design – not final, because the proposal is to let a contract for design & build, ie the contractor will come back with a final proposal for how the site will look when finished – suggests that there will be an element of fencing to distinguish between the commuter parking area and the shoppers’ short-term parking area.  Of course, the fencing will have to be arranged in such a way that cars can negotiate around it, so presumably people will be able to walk around as well!

 

Meanwhile, the same group presented a proposal to HTC last week in which they propose a development of the fairground site to include underground parking and a form of shopping mall, possibly including M&S as an anchor tenant – how exactly would you exercise your rights under the Law of Property Act 1923 then?

* Perhaps you have heard of the great 18^th Century French poet and writer Voltaire, probably most famous for his novel “Candide”, which contains the immortal lines “every now and then we shoot an admiral, pour encourager les autres (to encourage the others).  Perhaps his second-most-famous quote is his observation about the Holy Roman Empire, still extant during his lifetime, which he dismissed as “neither Holy, nor Roman, nor an Empire”.

The Haslemere Herald featured this story on its front page – they do love a “parking woes” story – under the headline “Wey Hill protestors make plea”.  Much of the article is simply  a repetition of what I have set out above, but I note that Pope's Mead resident, Graeme Spratley, is quoted challenging Haslemere & Villages Vision's development scheme due to long-known technical problesm with the site's suitability for construction. 

At the foot of the article a photo shows the demonstrators who turned out to protest the WBC application – all of about 10 adults and half a dozen kids answering the call to arms posted in the HAG website.  I haven’t copied it to here because the on-line version of the paper is too low resolution, but you can always add to the Herald’s coffers by buying your own copy to see for yourself! 

Analysis of ROP statutory consultation

It now appears that attempts to obtain a full analysis of the responses to the October/November statutory consultation on the ROP schemes have come to nought, although a little information has emerged about the Surrey Highways officers’ methodology in compiling and analysing those responses.  Without the full information the picture remains unclear but a number of things can be inferred from what has actually been written down.

Taking the published analysis, as supplied in advance of the Waverley Local Committee meeting on January 24^th, with the further information provided, the following picture emerges:

·         Officers counted 382 respondents to the consultation.  In arriving at this number, they have eliminated any double counting, for example where an individual has signed a petition, or complete the on-line response form, and also emailed comments individually.  They have also discounted all unidentified respondents claimed by persons writing on behalf of a resident association or similar, but without individually naming them – otherwise they might have inadvertently double-counted if some of those unnamed individuals had also responded individually

·         They have however counted each individual objection or supporting comment, so that if an individual wrote to support, or object to, more than one named scheme giving grounds in each case, they counted more than one response.  Where an individual wrote to say “I support/object to all of the schemes” that has been counted as a single generaL response

·         The 382 respondents made a total of 248 supporting comments and 507 objections, a total of 755 responses – about 2 each.

·         While this cannot be explicitly evidenced, it appears as though (close to) 248 respondents each made one comment in support of one scheme or another, while the balance – the remaining 134 or thereabouts – made the 507 objections, on average nearly four each.  The written analysis certainly refers to individuals objecting to more than one scheme or indeed to all the schemes, but it does not mention that supporters supported more than one, and this seems reasonable if one considers that by and large residents supported only their own schemes, feeling that commenting on another scheme might be undue interference in the affairs of their neighbours.

·         In summary, this suggests that supporters outnumbered objectors by a factor of close to two to one.

Reasons cited for objections included two key themes:  firstly, that the street-by-street approach should be abandoned in favour of a “holistic” solution.  There is no indication of any objector proposing what that holistic solution might be, and the HAG website, which advocates such a solution, also has no explicit proposals to offer.  Personally, I would keep an open mind about a “controlled parking zone” solution.  They have been known to work well elsewhere, around Horsham station for example, and  perhaps a CPZ scheme might also have resolved the commuter issue without leaving residents of individual streets unable to find parking.  However, in the absence of a constructive CPZ proposal by the objectors, and with the additional delays that its design would no doubt have caused, the street-by-street approach does at least go most of the way.  Given that the nature of the consultation was that people would support their own scheme while objectors would likely  object to many or all, it would have been interesting to see the responses if a single unified scheme had been proposed.

The second theme is that any scheme should await the construction of a multi-storey car park at the station, which is cited as the solution to most of the parking congestion issues.  Objectors referring to this argument may not have considered the challenge of having the cost of the scheme – some £9m – funded or how, without parking restrictions or comparable charges for on-street parking to eliminate “unfair competition”, both of which the objectors opposed (charges having been dropped due to opposition last March) the operators could reliably forecast revenues sufficient to service that cost.  It also rather appears that some prominent objectors who cited this argument had submitted objections to the planning application for the multi-storey last time it was made.

News Roundup, Week Ending 15 March 2013

Waverley Borough Council has submitted its section 38 application for permission under the Commons laws to resurface the Fairground car park. It is anticipated that cars parking there will be leafleted shortly by an alliance of the Haslemere Action Group against the Parking Proposals (HAG), the Haslemere Society, Haslemere & Villages Vision, and the Haslemere Chamber of Trade – all the organisations with Haslemere in their name, as a recent correspondent to the Herald might have put it – urging people to write in and object.

You can of course write in to support the proposal as well - it's your choice.   The email address for comments is commonlandcasework@pins.gsi.gov.uk. The case reference is COM 454.

Haslemere Town Council has approached, or plans to approach, Waverley Borough Council to request the transfer to HTC of the “Fairground” car park site – the unsurfaced car park opposite St Christopher’s Green and next to the Shahanaz restaurant on Weyhill.

Members of Haslemere & Villages Vision – see below – presented a proposal to HTC at its meeting on Thursday evening, featuring a redevelopment of the Fairground site  with an underground car park beneath a small public square, surrounded on three sides by retail units.  They mooted the idea of inviting Marks & Spencer Foods to be the anchor tenant.  The presenters were hazy about where the funds for the development would come from.

The Waverley Local Area Committee  of Surrey and Waverley councils have responded to four questions from residents concerning car parking arrangements in Haslemere.  A copy of the document in pdf can be found here.  Notable points:

·         They refused the requests of residents of Beech Road, and the Hospital League of Friends, for an Exception Order, to expedite a modified version of the original proposal with a shorter parking curfew tied to co-incide with the hospital’s lunchtime closure,   citing “ numerous objections to the advertised proposals in this road during the statutory consultation on the grounds that it would be more difficult for visitors and patients to access the hospital”  notwithstanding the fact that many of those numerous objections relate to difficulties for hospital outpatients’ parking which Beech Rd Residents/ League of Friends’ request specifically addresses, thus implying that the decision has been made on the basis of the other objections, ie by visitors/retail workers seeking all-day parking

·         They do not intend to respond further to the request for a fuller analysis of objections and support so that the true balance between objectors and supporters can be understood.  This may now become the subject of a Freedom of Information Request.

·         Certain residents of Courts Hill Road West (where Surrey officers had recommended not proceeding with a ROP scheme, which recommendation was rejected by the Committee at its January meeting) appealed that although they have off-road parking, they occasionally need permits to park on-street due eg to bad-weather-related difficulties in exiting steep drives.  The Committee resolved that the Courts Hill Rd scheme would proceed “as advertised” ie with stricter limits on which residents can have permits, but agreed to send officers around to discuss residents’ difficulties with a view to finding a short-term solution before the Phase 2 review.  Apparently the appellants were not entirely satisfied with this response.

·         Residents eligible for ROP permits should expect to hear from Surrey “in March” about the timetable for introducing the scheme in the early summer, and from Guildford Borough, operators of the scheme, with application forms for permits in May

Haslemere & Villages Vision features on the front page of this week’s Herald, announcing their impending launch and a photo competition.  Every house in the town can expect to receive a flyer with further details shortly, inviting residents to call in at the Haslemere Hall on 27 April and offer their suggestions of how they would lke the town to look – although it does rather appear that they have decided what residents will want to do with the Fairground car park before asking them.

Members of the H&VV team feature in a photograph on the front page of this week’s Herald.  Three of those present can be clearly identified as members of HAG, the group which did not apparently think it necessary to ask the residents of several central Haslemere roads  for their opinions before lobbying hard against introduction of residents’ parking controls.  The leaflet urging objections to the Fairground carpark proposals also discloses that H&VV is allied to the Haslemere Society, the Chamber of Trade, and HAG.

You might draw your own conclusions about the organisation's impartiality.