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Bunts Lane felling is due to ash dieback; replanting will follow
John Wilding of Clinton Devon Estates has written to a local resident: ‘I confirm that the recent felling at Bunts Lane is ash dieback related.
The plan details the areas where we have had to fell diseased ash close to Bunts Lane and Couchill. Most of the work was undertaken two years ago, and has been replanted.
Bunts lane had a stay of execution as the dieback was slower to progress here; we took some badly infected trees out of the New Beer Road / Bunts lane junctions three years ago, which helped, however the disease situation change last year and the time to intervein, before the trees became lethal to both road users and the felling team who undertake the work arrived this winter.
I appreciate it is a change but can assure you the site will quickly heal as full light reinvigorates the ground flora, at least for a few years before trees once again close in. As the area becomes a thicket a whole range of different wildlife will benefit compared to the ash and sycamore pole stage stand that has been worked.
We do plan to replant but it is unlikely to be this spring as I am unable to source plants this late in the season – we have been seriously delayed due to the need for and delay in getting the road closure. Replanting will now be undertaken next winter when a mixture of cherry, sycamore and oak. The sycamore and oak are unlikely to grow to maturity, due to the ravages of Grey squirrel and long term the woodland is likely to become a cherry wood, fortunately cherry is largely left alone by Grey squirrel!
Thank you for your interest and I understand your reaction to this change. I have no doubt that local wildlife will seize the opportunity and the increased diversity will quickly be a net gain for Bunts lane.’
Richard Foord pursues Hospital funding issue in Commons question
The Seaton Hospital Steering Committee, elected at the public meeting in November, is aiming to apply to the Community Ownership Fund to support our bid to utilise the vacant wing of the Hospital. Richard Foord MP has asked a helpful question in the Commons:
Richard Foord (Tiverton and Honiton) (LD)
On the community ownership fund, it is welcome that the match funding requirements for local organisations have been reduced to 20%. In future rounds, could the criterion around match funding take account of prior investment by the community, such as the very many small donations that people in the Axe valley area gave to build Seaton community hospital?
Michael Gove
That is an interesting idea. I am very fond of the Axe valley, so I will look at it.
A Seaton view of Richard Foord MP: ‘He spoke as if he was one of us, not someone in high places’
After yesterday’s Seaton Hospital meeting I got a message from one of the people who was there thanking me for getting Richard to come along: ‘Richard Foord being there meant a great deal to a lot of people. He spoke as if he was one of us and not someone in high places. That matters.’
Richard Foord gets government minister to disown plans to demolish Seaton Hospital
In his campaign to support Seaton Hospital in Parliament, Richard Foord, our MP, secured a second adjournment debate on Friday, on the accountability of NHS Property Services which owns the Hospital.
In an eloquent contribution (read it in full, it’s well worth it), Richard pointed out that since the Hospital is owned by NHS Property Services and that company is wholly owned by the government, the government could and should change Property Services’ policy of charging clinical ‘market rents’ for any use of hospital space, in cases like Seaton where the local community has paid for the hospital.
The minister replying said the government couldn’t intervene to change the policy for a particular case, thereby ducking Richard’s request that the government change the policy in relation to community hospitals in general. Nevertheless, he did say that there are no plans to demolish a wing of Seaton Hospital, which would ‘very much be a last resort in any event’ – although of course we know that the Devon NHS sourced government funding to do precisely that.
The minister also referred to the fact that the site has now been listed as an asset of community value, ‘which means that such a drastic step is exceedingly unlikely to be supported by the local planning authority or other local stakeholders’. We have East Devon District Council, led by Colyton Liberal Democrat councillor Paul Arnott, to thank for that.
Will Simon Jupp repudiate Mad Liz Truss’s new extremism?
The Conservative Party is embroiled in a new wave of far-right extremism, with Suella Braverman as well as Lee Anderson inciting hostility to Muslims and Liz Truss, appearing with the notorious US far-rightist Steve Bannon, accepting his praise of the extreme-right agitator Tommy Robinson as well as herself endorsing Donald Trump and his threat to democracy in all but name.
Simon Jupp MP, who is now the Conservative candidate for our constituency, welcomed Mad Liz Truss when she became prime minister 18 months ago and supported her catastrophic mini-budget (see the photo above, which he posted on his Twitter feed). Will he now condemn her new extremism and back calls for her to lose the Tory whip?
Claire Wright’s fulsome endorsement of Paul Arnott
Claire writes (from Facebook): I am really happy to announce that I am backing Paul Arnott to take Exmouth and Exeter East in the general election! For those of you not familiar with Paul, he is the Liberal Democrat leader of East Devon District Council, presiding over a rainbow coalition of LibDem, Independent and Green…
— Read on eastdevonwatch.org/2024/02/13/breaking-claire-wrights-fulsome-endorsement-of-paul-arnott/
Paul Arnott to stand for new Exmouth constituency
Paul Arnott, leader of East Devon District Council and long-time Colyton resident, is to stand for the Liberal Democrats in the new Exmouth & Exeter East constituency. Paul, who has been an inspiring leader of EDDC, co-founded the East Devon Alliance of Independents in 2013 and joined the Lib Dems when Richard Foord was fighting to become our MP in the 2022 by-election.
Most of the new Exmouth constituency is the old East Devon seat held first by Hugo Swire and now by Simon Jupp. Claire Wright, who stood as an Independent and was second in the last three elections (running Jupp close in 2019) is supporting Paul this time, and got together with him this week (above).
Since Labour have said that Exmouth (like Honiton & Sidmouth) is not a ‘battleground seat’ for them, Paul is now the frontrunner to defeat the Tories in this seat. Together, Paul and Richard could give East Devon an excellent voice in the new Parliament.
NHS Devon rectifies procedural error, confirms intention to hand back whole wing of Hospital
When NHS Devon’s Integrated Care Board (ICB) decided last autumn to hand back part of Seaton Hospital to NHS Property Services for disposal, the report it approved referred only to the former ward accommodation on the ground floor of the 1991 wing, although verbally they claimed to be handing back the wing as a whole, i.e. also including first floor offices being used by the Community Team (who visit patients in their homes) and the League of Friends Hospice at Home team. Thus although they claimed to only handing back unused space, they were in fact disposing of space that is still in use.
When we finally saw the report in late December, I wrote to the ICB pointing out that they did not have the authority to hand back the whole wing. This week, they put forward a new paper rectifying their error, and indicating that the Community Team offices would be moved to other rooms on the ground floor, including the area recently used as a vaccination suite.
The Seaton Hospital Steering Committee objected to this on the grounds that the suite in the Hospital had been very successful and it is important for vaccinations to be available locally. My question about this was read out by the chair, Dr Sarah Wollaston, at their Board meeting today, but they rejected our request to restrict the handback to the former ward area. She said that emptying the wing ‘facilitates the handback’, and that while they understand the concerns about the vaccination suite, they have an excellent track record of using all relevant spaces for vaccinations (thus she ignored our point that we need this facility locally). You can watch at NHS Devon board meetings – YouTube – it’s right at the end of today’s meeting.
The Steering Committee continues its discussions about uses of spaces in the Hospital and will meet representatives of the ICB and Property Services in the Hospital a week today.
Seaton & Colyton MATTERS 