Have Torridge outsourced certain functions elsewhere or have the Journal made a mistake?

Well that’s it for the next four years – apart from the promised EU referendum of course and whatever the SNP have to throw at the rest of the country!

I’m very despondent about the elections. The one minor positive aspect as far as I’m concerned is that Nigel Farage has resigned as leader of UKIP, and UKIP have, thankfully, only got one MP.

We’ve lost an excellent constituency MP and gained someone who has only moved to North Devon in the past few months and is known to have made hugely disparaging comments about rural people.

The Lib Dems were a successful moderating influence on the previous administration and that’s now gone. I don’t understand why the Lib Dems have been punished for doing a good job. Possibly it was the fear engendered by Cameron of might happen if the Conservatives didn’t get in i.e. a Labour SNP alliance.

Now we still have the distinct possibility of the SNP holding the rest of the UK to ransom. Given that they got 56 seats with only a 4.7% share of the total votes cast that is truly bizarre and very unsettling. In fact they won 56 out of the 59 Scottish seats with only a 50% share of the Scottish votes.

To all those people locally who were concerned about issues such as the closure of community hospital beds, the abysmal adult social services, the closure of the Youth Resource Centre etc. All I can say is “you ain’t seen nothing yet”!

As far as localism is concerned forget it. The previous administration made much of their localism policies but in fact major issues were still determined centrally. Issues like planning for example, where the views and wishes of local people now have very little sway indeed.

The Huffington Post has an amusing, if scary, ‘translation’ of Cameron’s victory speech here.

My dislike of the major political parties has only grown. But unlike Russell Brand I don’t advocate not voting. What I do advocate is engaging with the political process. Keep an eye on your MP, check his attendance record, check his voting record and if it displeases you make your views known. Do the same with your local councillors and the District Council.

The good news is that your two re-elected district councillors (John Moore and David Worden) do actually live in the town, do know what the local issues are, do now how local government works, know how to use the system to best advantage and above all they do care about South Molton and its residents.

The two Conservative candidates for the District in contrast, whilst nice well-intentioned people, don’t have a clue how local government works, don’t really know what the local issues in South Molton are, and haven’t shown any sign of being engaged in local issues. Let’s hope they start becoming involved.

BT Openreach are putting in an awful lot of fibre in around South Molton so in the next couple of weeks you’ll see road works along Barnstaple Road, the road between the Bish Mill roundabout and Mole Bridge, along Pathfields, and between Aller Cross and Filleigh.

Another sign that superfast broadband is coming to South Molton is that BT Openreach  will be installing a BT Infinity (i.e. superfast broadband) cabinet near 1 Normandy Way in the next few days. Yet, bizarrely, the Connecting Devon and Somerset website shows the area around Oak Meadow that’s right next to Normandy Way as still being under evaluation!

I just hope that I’ll eventually get it! Mind you, a few weeks ago the Connecting Devon and Somerset website showed my postcode, EX36 4BB, as getting superfast broadband in October 2015. I’ve just looked at the site and the date has slipped to January 2016 so I’m not holding my breath.

The planning application for the new South Molton Community College can now be seen on the NDDC planning web site here.

Be aware that the planning website can be very slow indeed and that the relevant documents haven’t yet been uploaded!

In his election piece in South Molton News David Worden (Liberal Democrat) says this:

“I . . . worked to get NDC to put £400,000 in this year’s budget to resurface and extend the car park and remove redundant buildings”.

Yes, NDDC would appear to have allocated £400,000 to works in and around the central car park area, but in essence nothing has happened in four years – hardly a ringing endorsement.

The reality is this:

1. Car Park Extension in Sheep Pen Area Behind Amory Centre. The NDDC business case, written in November 2011, contained the following timescale:
• Release funds – April 2012
• Confirm scheme design – May 2012
• Planning application – May 2012
• Tender – July 2012
• Start on site – August 2012
• Completion – September 2012

Total cost for this project (including demolition of sheds) was put at £130,000.  The 2014/15 NDDC capital budget had £30,000 allocated for this work and the 2015/16 budget has £96,126 allocated – a total of £126,126.

We’re now in May 2015 and work hasn’t even started!

2. Demolition of Buildings behind Pannier Market (the old Phoenix Recycling). The business case was written in November 2011 and contained the following timescale:
• Release funds – April 2012
• Confirm scheme design – May 2012
• Tender – July 2012
• Start on site – August 2012
• Completion – September 2012

Total cost for this project was estimated at £75,000.

As of today the only sign of activity is that a planning application for prior approval of demolition has been submitted and approved.

3. South Molton Central Car Park
The business case was written in November 2014 and the total cost was estimated at £200,000.

The timescale quoted was:
• Funding approved – January 2015
• Drawings and tender – May 2015
• Construction – June 2015

Worryingly the report suggests that car parking charges will be increased once the project has been completed!

Michael Buckingham (Conservative candidate for the District Council), has this to say in the latest edition of South Molton News:

“My council tax in London, in the Conservative led borough of Wandsworth, was half what I pay in North Devon.”

That may well be the case, and there are very many reasons why Wandsworth’s council tax is so low, but the interesting point – which Michael doesn’t mention – is that the bulk of council tax in North Devon goes to the Conservative controlled County Council.

Of the £1,668.62 Band D tax bill for a South Molton resident the  county council takes  70% and the Conservative Police and Crime Commissioner takes 10%. The LibDem/Independent led District Council take only 10%, with the remainder going to the Conservative controlled Devon and Somerset Fire Authority and SMTC.

The District Council didn’t increase their council tax bill this year. The SMTC bill went down and the other three authorities increased rates by 1.99%. So the only increases came from Conservative controlled authorities!

Interestingly Wandsworth Council think that in order to balance the books their Band D council tax bill will have to increase by a whopping 40% in 2016/17 with a further increase of 20% the following year. That will mean that between 2015/16 and 2017/18 the Wandsworth Band D bill will have increased by an extraordinary 68%!

That’s not all. The Wandsworth bill includes money payable to the Greater London Authority (the GLA) and the GLA charge will go down. This means that the amount that Wandsworth itself levies will go up by a massive 75% in 2016/17 and a further for 28% in 2017/18 – a total of 124%!

I wonder how they’ll cope given that under current legislation any increase of more than 2% requires a referendum of the council’s electors?

I’ve just had a call from somebody called Lauren calling on behalf of the Conservatives. She asked for me by name.

What I’d like to know is how they got my name and number. The number they rang isn’t the one on my election literature, neither is it the one on my web site, nor am I in the phone directory, and I’ve never given them my phone number (or anything else!).

So how did they get it?

Under S106 of the amended Town and Country Planning Act 1990, contributions can be sought from developers towards the costs of providing community and social infrastructure, the need for which has arisen as a result of a new development taking place. This is commonly known as Section 106 (or S106) money.

Typically the contributions are made to fund public open spaces, highways infrastructure, primary and secondary education, public transport (generally new bus stops) and car parks.

The Section 106 contributions related to highways, education and public transport get paid to the county council and the other payments go to the district council.

Over the past seven years North Devon District Council (NDDC) has received more than £500,000 from developers in South Molton and spent just £97,000. This leaves more than £400,000 in the kitty.

This doesn’t include contributions which will come from the Gullacombe, North Road and Nadder Lane developments.

The Gullacombe development alone should result in additional payments of about £380,000 to NDDC.

The figure for the North Road development has not yet been finalised as it will be dependant on how many houses eventually get built, and many of those are provided as social housing.

The Nadder Lane S106 agreement is currently being negotiated so no figures are available yet, although Devon County council has requested a contribution of £629,040 for primary school places!

Returning to the NDDC S106 money: over the same period for the whole of North Devon the district council has received £3,327,658, spent £1,804,690 and repaid £7,562 – leaving a balance of £1,515,406.

NDDC seems to be better at spending money outside South Molton than it does at spending money in South Molton – 15.3% of NDDC’s S106 came from developments in South Molton whereas only 5.4% of the S106 money has been spent in South Molton.

Are NDDC saving all the money for the proposed Sports Hub?

They’ve got to be careful because  if the money isn’t spent within a certain period of time it has to be repaid to the developers!

I walked along Cooks Cross on Wednesday to take Max (the dog) to the vets to be weighed – he was 8.3 kg when he arrived from Spain in mid-December and  now weighs 18.1 kg!

Anyway, walking back along Cooks Cross the dog chased a squirrel up a tree. As I carried on walking I noticed a shadow flitting along the pavement. I looked up, and there was the squirrel using a power line as an aerial walkway to the next tree – a distance of about 50 yards!

Later a met a lady who lives in Canada but comes to see her mother, who’s in Eastleigh,  for a couple of weeks most years. She said that the squirrels near her home in Toronto use the power lines to cross the road!

Polling Day is of course on Thursday 7 May. In reality people have been able to cast their vote since about 24 April- almost two weeks earlier.

Postal votes were sent out on 23 and 24 April so the first ones could have been received at the Electoral Services Offices in Barnstaple on Monday 27 April. In fact that’s the first day the postal votes were opened. So, in essence, polling really started then and will finish on 7 May.

Postal voters are crucial to candidates as they tend to vote and there are a large number of them. The turnout for postal voters is generally 70% to 80%  and they form an increasing proportion of the electorate. For example, in South Molton there are something like 3,950 registered voters of whom about 615 are postal voters – 15.5% of the total.

This is more of an issue in elections where overall turnout is low as the postal voter ‘turnout’ remains high. An additional factor in town/parish council elections is the fact there is no duty to send out official polling cards to the electorate. Therefore the only people who will definitely know that there is an election will be postal voters, as they must be sent their ballot papers.