The Committee to welcome the MP and put questions.
Minutes:
The Chairman welcomed Mr Stride to the meeting.
Cllr Mrs J Roach asked the following question regarding the relaxation of planning controls and raise concerns regarding the following:
With regard to permitted development, the legislation for conversion of agricultural buildings to housing is weakly written, particularly with regard to interpretation of the word "structure" and this has led to marked variation in decisions. Also because it is permitted development, it only has to meet certain criteria and permission is automatically given. Neighbours and other interested parties have no right to object. An additional danger is that a modern barn is converted and sold. The farm is sold and the new owner has inadequate storage. He/she then applies for a new barn under a formal planning application, is given permission and so the cycle continues. This only benefits the land owner, has a minimal impact on housing needs and destroys the countryside.
Regarding barn conversions Mr Stride clarified that there was no carte blanche blanket ability for anyone that owned a barn to do what they wished with it, there could still be restrictions that the local authority considered it appropriate to apply for example, the guidance stated that development is permitted subject to before the conversion taking place the applicant must apply for planning, with regard to transport, contamination, flood risk and other areas, a whole group of tools and caveats that the local authority may apply when they didn’t feel in respect to those matters that the proposal was appropriate. He offered to approach DCLG if there were any angles that Mrs Roach wanted him to look into the matter further.
Local people should have a strong say in the decision. The future of local services (shops, schools and GP surgeries) is important in the decision.
Mr Stride responded that the Local Plan and Neighbourhood Plans were the tools by which the authority could ensure that areas, such as the infrastructure, were in place. Decision making should be taken at the lowest level possible. He suggested that the local community should become involved early in the process when consultation was taking place. He informed Cllr Mrs Roach that if there were specific cases to be looked into he would be happy to do so.
Guidance on back garden development was unclear resulting in decisions which do not appear to be consistent.
With regard to back garden development the MP said that he would look into this for Cllr Roach. He understood that there had been a significant number of back garden developments prior to 2008 but that this had been stopped.
Cllr Mrs Roach stated that she was aware that the Charity Commission had severe difficulties responding to queries. Whilst I thank you for your successful intervention in our case, I am concerned that the delays are causing significant problems to people who are trying to help their communities. The Charity Commission stated in a letter to me that their inability to respond to queries was due to 'cuts' -would you please raise this problem at Government level? Mrs Roach explained the difficulties that she had encountered with delays in finding information.
Mr Stride explained that with regard to ‘Room 4 U’ there had been some missing information which added to the delay. He had sympathy with Cllr Roach for the time delay and had a meeting with the Minister for Charities and his response was that he believed the situation was going to improve due to investments in the systems used. He considered that empowerment of local people must be encouraged and that he saw his role as MP to feed this sort of information back to Ministers.
Cllr Roach gave further examples of the difficulties in getting through to the Charity Commission on the telephone and the language that was used when they required information was difficult to follow. Mr Stride asked for the telephone number that had caused this problem so that he could report this back to the Minister.
Cllr Mrs Roach stated that the 2012 Executive arrangements give the Cabinet the power to meet in secret if the meeting is disrupted by disorderly conduct. She stated that her view was that this conflicted with the openness and transparency agenda. If someone behaves in a disorderly way there was already an ability to suspend the meeting and evict that person or people involved. It should not be an excuse to then hold the rest of the meeting in a closed session. In her opinion that was clearly wrong as there may well be well behaved people who would like to listen to the debate.
Mr Stride stated that the guidance in 2012 stated that the default position was that Cabinet meetings should be held in open and public but gave provision that in the case of disorder to either remove the individual or close the meeting down, perhaps in the case of persistent disruption. But there was no requirement for a Cabinet to do this. He quoted legislation that clarified this.
The Leader of the Council pointed out that no meeting has been closed to the public in the five years that he had been in the Cabinet.
The Chairman pointed out that the Head of Communities and Governance had spoken to the DCLG and found that the Constitution was correct regarding this matter.
As a point of interest Mr Stride pointed out that the House of Commons itself could sit in private if it wanted.
Cllr Mrs Roach informed Mr Stride that people on low wages are having severe difficulties in getting on the housing ladder. Despite many schemes there are few opportunities for people in rural villages to access affordable housing. Enabling housing associations to sell off their homes will have a serious knock on effect in relation to exception sites. How many landowners will sell land at a reduced price for social housing only to discover at a later date that it has been sold and will eventually become a house that is subject to the market?
Mr Stride did not think that this was a decisive argument because he considered that with right to buy the government’s position was that for each property sold another would be built and that this should be driving house building rather than restricting. He thought that home ownership was a great thing and would like people to have the opportunity to own their own home. He stated that the local plan included a provision for affordable homes. Mr Stride agreed that the proportion of young people able to afford their own home had declined over recent years and that this was something the government was working hard to reverse. The strategy was to drive the number up through schemes like right to buy, ISA’s; ways of helping young people to get onto the ladder. Community Land Trusts could be used to ensure that local people can afford local homes.
Mr Stride offered to provide contacts so that authorities could share good practice regarding the use of Community Land Trusts.
Cllr T W Snow raised a matter regarding infrastructure. Mr Stride stated that his priorities were based around the resilience of the South West such as the rail line and the A303, the arteries into the peninsular.
Cllr F J Rosamond asked Mr Stride his view regarding the loss of A levels in Tiverton. He said that we see the failure of a competitive market coupled with declining resources and asked what could be done to correct this serious omission of educational opportunity in Tiverton?
Mr Stride explained that Tiverton was not within his Constitution but suggested that Mr Neil Parish MP could be approached regarding this. He added that there were opportunities for Free Schools in the area.
Cllr Rosamond further stated that there was a real fear that the introduction of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership would damage the National Health Service. Leading barrister Michael Bowsher QC, an authority on EU law states that TTIP poses a "real and serious risk" to the NHS. If the deal went ahead as currently drafted, it could force irreversible privatisation of our national health service. .He asked if Mr Stride was aware of this legal advice and its implications.
Mr Stride replied that he thought trade agreements and free trade were one of the elements that helped society to grow and develop and create jobs and create successful business and an economy that can then in turn provide the public services that we quite rightly as a civilised society expect to be able to provide. We cannot do one without the other so trade agreements are important. We do not want trade agreements that are onerous and could lead to full scale privatisation. Mr Stride did not believe that these agreements would lead to wholescale privatisation. He quoted from a letter from the European Commissioner for trade which stated what was required of these agreements and he considered this information showed that these agreements safe. He also pointed out that privatisation of the NHS did not mean that the user would have to pay, the NHS was free at the point of use and based on need rather than ability to pay. However, providing these services had to be as efficient as possible. The private sector provided around 6% of health services in the UK. Mr Stride offered to share the letter from the European Commissioner with the Committee.
Cllr Rosamond asked if we could please have the same amount of transparency with private organisations such as Virgin or G4S that provided a service to the public funded by taxpayer’s money as public organisations themselves, such as local government bodies that rightly are fully exposed to transparency requirements.
Mr Stride explained that the FOI process was so onerous that it would not be practical to expect private companies to comply at the same level. However, during the procurement process it was within the remit of public sector organisations to insist on certain levels of transparency in the contracts that they put in place.
Cllr N A Way had asked now that the in-patient beds had been removed from Crediton Hospital, a major problem and a key factor in trying to develop a Community Health Hub on the site was the issue concerning the possibility of adapting and improving the site? Until there was clarity on this general and important matter from the health authority and government planning a way forward for our local health professionals and community representatives was difficult.
This matter had already been discussed at agenda item 5 but Mr Stride added that he had recently visited Crediton Hospital and had been impressed by the level of activity taking place. He felt heartened by what was going on there and considered that there would be a clearer picture when the transfer to the RDE was complete.
Cllr Way had also asked how did you and the other Devon Members of Parliament vote in the recent Local Government Finance Settlement debate?
Mr Stride replied that he thought the settlement for Devon was a good one in the circumstances and had supported it, as did all other Devon MP's with the exception of Ben Bradshaw in Exeter.
Cllr Mrs J B Binks and Cllr Mrs M Squires presented Mr Stride with a petition regarding broadband, which they asked him to pass to Ed Vaizey, Minister of State for Culture and the Digital Economy.
The Chairman thanked Mr Stride for attending the meeting