No-hope Labour and Lib Dem candidates cost Independent Paul Hayward the Axminster seat on DCC
RESULT:
Ian Hall (Conservative) 1672
Paul Hayward (Independent East Devon Alliance) 1439
Oliver Tucker (Labour) 498
Jules Hoyles (Liberal Democrat) 209
Paul Hayward would have been a great County Councillor.
WHY, OH WHY, do these parties insist on standing everywhere, preventing fellow-progressives from ousting the Conservatives?
THE SEATON AND COLYTON RESULT WILL BE ANNOUNCED ANY TIME FROM AROUND 3 PM THIS AFTERNOON. (I won’t be able to live-blog this from the count, but I will tweet it @MartinShawEDA.
Polling ‘manic’ in Colyford, and steady in Seaton and across the district
This morning I toured the polling stations, from Seaton to Beer, Branscombe, Southleigh, Northleigh, Offwell, Wilmington, Colyton and Colyford.
Polling was generally pretty steady, but brisk in Colyton and described as ‘manic’ by polling clerks in Colyford, where parish council elections added to the excitement of the county contest.
Spare a thought for polling clerks in Wilmington – where the hall was without electricity and the door wide open on a cold early May morning!
Back to the Methodist Church polling station in Scalwell Lane, Seaton, now.
You have until 10 to cast your vote – results will be known late afternoon tomorrow.
(photo, outside Colyton Town Hall)
Absentee owners of Beer Road field propose 2-metre-high fence to block views to sea
In an extraordinary move, the absentee owners of the field at the top of Beer Road have obtained a certificate of lawful development from EDDC to put a 2-metre fence all along the top end of the field, along Beer Road. This will obliterate the view shown in the photo above, preventing local residents and walkers on the Coastal Path from looking across the field to the sea. (Erecting a fence constitutes ‘permitted development’ and does not require planning permission; the certificate confirms this applies.)
The owners, two sisters who live in Gloucestershire, applied last year for planning permission to build a house on the site. EDDC indicated on the planning notice that this would be contrary to the Local Plan; although a decision has not been published, the owners clearly expect a refusal. Indeed they had threatened to erect a fence following objections by over 60 local residents as well as the SW Coastal Path Association, CPRE and Natural England.
Regardless of whether I am re-elected in tomorrow’s election, I shall be joining others from across the area and beyond who are telling me they want to do everything to stop this fence being erected.
Dan Ledger elected chair of Seaton Town Council and Town Mayor
Many congratulations to Dan, at 30 Seaton’s youngest-ever mayor.
Ken Beer, who has been mayor for the last two years, is the new vice-chair. Ken has achieved a lot during a very difficult period.
I look forward to working with them both in their new roles.
Local Conservatives have a nerve boasting about putting ‘meat on the bones’, when their government has both stripped funding and hoisted council tax
The Conservative candidates for Seaton and Axminster, in a paid advert in the Midweek Herald, say they are working to put ‘meat on the bones’ on the services we need in the area. This is incredible hypocrisy after their government has spent over a decade stripping the same services back to the bone.
Devon County Council’s funding has been reduced by far more than £100 million per year. Highways and Libraries are on standstill funding, i.e. reducing in real terms.
Austerity is still with us
Lest you be fooled by loose talk about austerity being over, let me remind you that golden boy Rishi Sunak has made it very clear that most areas of public services will be on starvation rations for the foreseeable future. Even local NHS managers are expecting funding constraints to return with a vengeance once the Covid emergency is over. These are the Government’s political choices, while they spend lavishly in other areas.
Local cuts
When you vote, just remember that in the last few years, Seaton, Axminster and Honiton hospitals have lost their beds because of Conservative spending cuts. NHS Property Services, which owns the hospitals, spurred on my the government’s incentives for property sales, put the Seaton and Axminster hospital sites forward for housing development.
Colyton Fire Station was almost closed for the same reason. Colyton Health Centre faced possible closure because NHS PS hiked their service charges 5 times. The town’s public services could have been decimated for the sake of land sales.
Only vigorous protests by the local communities, with my support as County Councillor, have held the line in these three cases. On the other hand, Conservative councillors from East Devon voted through the cuts in hospital beds.
‘Cutting Council Tax’ – a pure lie
Local Conservatives’ nerve is almost on a par with that of the well-known liar Boris Johnson, who last week claimed that the Conservatives were ‘cutting council tax’. That will be the same Conservatives who have RAISED Devon’s council tax by 30 per cent in the last 6 years, at the same time as CUTTING services.
You can’t trust the Conservatives to fight for local communities.
Less than 72 hours to polling day – remember that the Seaton polling stations have changed
As you get ready to vote on Thursday, please remember that in SEATON, the Town Hall is no longer being used as a polling station. You should look at your polling card to see which station you should go to.
If you’ve mislaid your card, you can still vote (you don’t need to produce a card, just tell the clerk your name and address).
You can work out your polling station using this guide:
Seaton Bowling Club, Seahill
For everyone in the western part of Seaton who is in the Beer and Branscombe district ward.
Marshlands Centre, Harbour Road
For everyone else, in the rest of Seaton, registered to an address in streets whose name begins with A-F (up to & including Fore Street)
Methodist Church, Scalwell Lane
For everyone else, registered to an address in streets whose name begins with F-Z (starting with Fortfield)
IF YOU GO THE WRONG STATION, they will tell you where your correct station is and you’ll have to go on to it.
POLLING STATIONS are unchanged in BEER, BRANSCOMBE, COLYTON, COLYFORD, FARWAY, NORTHLEIGH, OFFWELL, SOUTHLEIGH, and WILMINGTON – go to your usual town or village hall.
Claire Wright’s final plea to ban bee-harming chemicals blocked by the Conservative machine on the County Council
Claire Wright, who has done more than any politician in East Devon to protect wildlife and our natural environment, used her final meeting as a county councillor to get the Council to call on the government to reverse its recent lifting of the ban on neonicotinoids. This type of insecticide has proved hugely damaging to bees and other pollinators, as well as to birds and water courses.
Devon County Council’s Conservative cabinet proposed their usual watering-down amendment, to merely ask the government to ‘carefully review its consideration of emergency use applications’ of the chemicals.
This was then steamrollered through by the Tory machine despite a passionate – and at time despairing – plea from Claire.
There could be no more eloquent demonstration of why we need to vote out the Conservatives next Thursday. Let’s hope Claire’s legacy will be a new generation of Independent and other opposition county councillors from East Devon and the rest of the County.
Claire has been an inspiration to all of us, and to me as the only other non-Tory county councillor from our district on the current Council, an indispensable colleague for me. She will be sorely missed.
Devon Conservatives use procedural means to block discussion of Proportional Representation
In the last County Council elections in 2017, the Conservatives gained 44 per cent of the vote in Devon – 56 per cent went to other parties and Independents. Yet because of the first-past-the-post electoral system, they gained 70 per cent of the seats. This has given them an overwhelming majority on the Council and all its committees, which they use ruthlessly – even to ditch Seaton’s hospital beds a couple of years ago.
In Scotland and Northern Ireland, this system has been replaced by the Single Transferable Vote system, which enables voters to rank all candidates (thus voting for the individual as well as the party), and leads to second preferences being distributed so that you get a more balanced representation – with more encouragement for cooperation between councillors of different parties.
It also means that instead of most votes being cast for unsuccessful candidates, and thus wasted, ALL votes count towards the election of councillors. This encourages more people to vote.
This year, the Welsh Assembly has voted to allow local councils to choose this system for their elections, too. Only in England are we forced to stick with first-past-the-post. At yesterday’s Council meeting, I asked the Council to request legislation for England, too, so that Devon could choose its own system.
In response, the Conservative Cabinet produced a meaningless amendment, which simply removed all references to the voting system for Council elections from the motion. They then used their large majority to force this through. We must hope the new Council is more favourable to democracy and reform.
When is a pothole not a pothole? Devon County Council can tell you – but its policy leaves many genuine problems unfixed
‘We will not ignore any reports, however, we do have to prioritise our funding on safety and we cannot afford to fix all of the problems that are reported to us.
‘We will repair potholes that have a 40mm vertical edge and are 300mm wide.’
This is DCC’s policy. It means that many genuine problems don’t get fixed, or not until they’ve deteriorated.
In particular, this policy means that one hole is fixed, while the next one is left. It’s wasteful of time and effort, as well as damaging to people’s cars.
It results from the outsourcing of Highways maintenance, which requires that contractors meet precise specifications rather than using their common sense.
This policy infuriates many residents. I have repeatedly criticised it at County Hall. If we get a change of administration, a change in this policy will be one of my priorities.
I’ve signed Cycling UK’s pledges to support investment in active travel – including real routes like Colyford-Axminster which the current DCC administration refuses to back
I’ve signed a commitment to support Cycling UK’s campaign for investment in active travel, and specifically:
1 The investment needed in active travel to achieve the 2025 target to double levels of cycling, making active travel a priority in all transport and neighbourhood decision-making.
2 The development and delivery of an active travel network of safe, accessible and direct routes including cycling infrastructure networks designed to national standards in every town and city, and rural routes to link these.
This is particularly relevant to our area – as the current Conservative administration at DCC is refusing to back rural routes like the Stop Line Way between Colyford and Axminster, and this must be one of our big asks of a new administration.
