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Progress on traffic calming in Colyford and Seaton Down Hill – MP, councillors and police thrash out solutions with Community Speed Watch teams and residents
On Friday I chaired a meeting in Colyford in which interested parties discussed solutions to problems of speeding in the village and on Seaton Down Hill. Those present including Cllr Stuart Hughes (Cabinet member for Highways) and officers, Superintendent Elaine Hartley (Speed Watch Co-ordinator Peninsula Road Safety Partnership) and other police officers, Neil Parish MP (who had chaired two earlier meetings which had brought everyone together), and representatives of Colyton Parish Council and Seaton Town Council. In a lively meeting, progress was made including:
- Work should begin at the end of this month on a new pedestrian refuge in Seaton Down Hill.
- Surveys have established that the agreed crossing in Colyford would be best situated near the Memorial Hall, but problems associated with the school buses need to be resolved before this can go ahead.
- Devon Highways have accepted in principle that the 40 mph restriction on Harepath Hill could be extended past the A3052 junction with Seaton Down Hill (because of problems of visibility at the junction and the need for pedestrians to cross from the carpark to the footpath towards Holyford Woods). This change would mean that Seaton Down Hill would also be subject to a 40 limit, as asked for by the Speed Watch team and Town Council. However funding remains to be discussed and the change will need to go through the usual formal approval process.
- Two Vehicle Activated Signs (VAS) for Colyford (one at each end of the village) are under discussion between Highways, the Speed Watch team and myself.
- An additional uphill VAS sign for Seaton Down Hill is under discussion between Seaton Town Council, the Speed Watch team and myself.
The meeting was also a landmark get-together of local Community Speed Watch teams. Teams from Rousdon, Wilmington, Knowle, Ottery St Mary and West Hill, as well as the Colyford and Seaton Down Hill teams who organised the meeting, were present, and were unanimous in complaining about the slowness of police administrative procedures, the lack of data sharing, and uncertainty about how Highways and the police used Speed Watch results. Elaine Hartley acknowledged these problems and promised a meeting of teams from across Devon and Cornwall in the coming months.
Seaton’s tourism signage scheme gets go ahead at last
Devon County Council Highways has finally signed off the scheme for over 30 new tourism and traffic signs which the Town Council has been negotiating for over a year. The scheme will mean that new attractions like the Wetlands and Seaton Jurassic are finally properly signposted. The scheme has been carefully integrated to make everything easy to find for visitors coming into the town, and should be implemented this spring before the main tourist season.
People often complain about the Town Council but this scheme is a tribute to the persistence of councillors, who have brought partner organisations together and overcome difficulties in raising the full cost of the scheme. Devon County Council has contributed the majority of the £20,000 funding, and I have contributed £1000 from my County Councillor’s locality budget to help fill the funding gap.
SW bottom of the league for infrastructure spending – what do we get for having most of our MPs from the ruling party?
(from the Sunday Times) Britain does infrastructure well –
New Axe Valley service replaces X52 from Seaton and Beer to RD&E and Exeter from 22 January
The timetable for the new service is here: 52 Seaton-Exeter 220118. I am disappointed that the service does not include Colyford and, at my instigation, DCC are talking again to Axe Valley about this.
This is still a minimal service. If you want a better service, use these buses and encourage the company to believe more journeys would be viable!
Donald Campbell made MBE in New Year’s Honours
Well-known local naturalist, Donald Campbell, who lives in Colyton, has deservedly been honoured in the New Year’s Honours List, ‘For services to Nature Conservation.’ The citation notes that he was formerly chairman of the East Devon Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. I am sure everyone in the area will join me in congratulating him on this well-deserved recognition.
I am afraid I cannot summon up the same enthusiasm for the DBE (Damehood) awarded to Angela Pedder, who retired very recently as chief executive of the Devon NHS Success Regime and Sustainability and Transformation Plan. The citation says ‘For services to Healthcare’, but Pedder is one of those primarily responsible for the policy of hospital bed closures in Seaton, Honiton and other hospitals.
Conservatives block my call for the County Council to ‘speak up for Devon’ in the debate over the European Single Market and Customs Union – but it will produce an impact assessment
As the Brexit negotiations finally entered the phase of talking about the UK’s future economic relationship with the EU, I asked the County Council this week to speak up for Devon’s interests in the debate about whether we should stay in the European Single Market and Customs Union.
However my motion that we should stay in both arrangements as we leave the EU, because of the benefits they bring to Devon’s economy and the damage which leaving them will cause, was remitted to the Cabinet who will report back to the next Council meeting in February.
I argued that the motion should have been discussed this week. Pointing out that the DUP, SNP and Mayor of London had come forward to speak for their regional interests, I criticised our MPs for failing to speak as a group for Devon and the South West’s obvious interests in keeping close economic relationships with Europe. I said the Council should speak up and make it clear to Government which kind of Brexit we wanted. All opposition councillors (Liberal Democrats, Labour, Independent and Green) supported my call to debate the motion in the meeting, but the Tory majority voted to postpone the motion for two months.
One good thing did come from the proposal – Council leader, John Hart, promised that Cabinet would look at the evidence on the impact of Brexit on Devon in coming to their recommendation for the next meeting. Although I argued that we have enough evidence to make a judgement now (see below), it will be useful for the Council to do this work. Let’s hope their ‘impact assessment’ is a bit more thorough than the Government’s!
Note. I am fully aware that the majority of voters in Seaton & Colyton, and in Devon, supported leaving the EU. This is not about that decision – it’s about getting sensible terms for the future economic links. Some points I would have made if I’d been allowed to speak fully on this:
- By value, the SW has the highest proportion of goods exported to the EU of any UK region, rising above 60% in 2015 compared to national average of 44%. The value of SW goods exports to the EU has increased markedly in the last few years. We have actually had a positive trade balance, unlike many regions.
- 70% of Exeter’s and 68% of Plymouth’s exports go to the EU. These are the two highest figures of any UK cities.
- Exeter University is one of the top recipients of EU grants. While tourism to Devon has benefited from the weak pound which Brexit has caused, recent figures have shown that international students bring greater economic benefits to Exeter than tourism does.
- While we do not have figures for the losses of EU and international staff from Devon’s NHS and care system, our officers have stated that this is a major concern.
- Farming has a larger share in Devon than in the rest of the UK economy. Neil Parish MP says that ‘The EU is a vital market for British agriculture and food & drink exports. EU member states account for 7/8 of the UK’s top agricultural export markets. In 2015, 93% of all British beef exports went to the EU – a trade worth £320 million.’
Given all this information, it is very clear what kind of relationship with the EU is in Devon’s interests:
- Neil believes that for agriculture, ‘it’s crucial the UK retains a close relationship with the EU market’.
- Meurig Raymond, president of the NFU has backed a temporary customs union with the EU after Brexit.
- Exeter University as part of the Russell Group of leading universities is lobbying to remain part of the EU Framework Programmes for research, to reassure EU staff that they have a future in the UK and to ensure new EU staff can be recruited.
- Remaining in the Single Market is vital for selling goods and services to the EU, and to ensure we recruit and retain sufficient EU workers to support our NHS, social care, farming and hospitality sectors – new figures show that migration into the SW has fallen more sharply than in the SE.
- The Customs Union is crucial for all our exporters, whether in manufacturing, farming or services, to avoid bureaucratic obstacles to trade which will hit small businesses hardest.
- The Centres for Cities estimates that a ‘hard’ Brexit, leaving these arrangements, will roughly double the hit to Devon’s and Exeter’s economies compared to ‘soft’ Brexit.
There is no point in developing a SW strategy for productivity and growth, if we don’t first stop the harm that leaving the Single Market and Customs Union will cause.
Labour joins Tories at Devon County Council to support joint ‘devolution’ with Somerset, against Independent, Lib Dem and Green opposition
Most Labour members joined the Conservative majority on Thursday in voting down my amendment for the County Council to revisit its controversial ‘devolution’ proposals to join Devon with Somerset in the so-called Heart of the South West, first in a formal Joint Committee and then (envisaged but not proposed at this stage) in a Combined Authority. I argued that the proposals for an extra layer of bureaucracy have no democratic consent – they were not even in the Conservatives’ Devon manifesto last May.
I argued that we were being asked to support ‘a regional economic strategy that doesn’t add up to a government which doesn’t know what it’s doing about devolution, and for this we’re prepared to enter a half-baked new constitutional arrangement which will probably have to be scrapped as soon as a more rational government devolution policy is devised.’
Six of Labour’s Exeter members followed the line of Exeter City Council which is joining the Tory-run County and district councils in supporting the current devolution proposals (one abstained). They believe that Exeter’s economy will gain from the (currently unknown) amount of money the devolution bid will gain from government (which of course will be giving back a small proportion of the money it is currently taking from services). I argued that the plan does not have a viable economic strategy behind it, and that rural, coastal and small-town Devon stands to gain virtually nothing from it.
Liberal Democrat and Green councillors joined Independents in voting for my amendment. The webcast will be available here.
At last, recognition that small towns have very different situations from cities, especially for young people. The new Centre for Towns sounds very interesting.
Many of Britain’s towns are shrinking; big-city Britain is largely thriving. Taking south Wales as an example of these divisions, Ian Warren explains why his new Centre for Towns will advocate for the future of our towns, particularly during a period when both major parties in the UK parliament appear committed to city regions.
Devon County Council opposes Southwestern Railways cutting Clapham Junction stops
The Leader, Cllr John Hart, has taken up the case. I had brought this to the attention of the Council’s Chief Officer for Transportation, and I’m pleased to see that John Hart has spoken out strongly on this.
Seaton & Colyton MATTERS 