The local threat from Trump UK
Leafleting in Seaton for Paul Arnott, a man makes a point of coming out of his house and handing the leaflet back to me. “We don’t want this rubbish’, he says. It’s happened a couple of times before – always a man, always on the wrong side of 50. These angry older men don’t care about local issues, only immigration, and the signs are they’re voting for Nigel Farage’s Reform UK.
Reform claims that ‘Britain is broken’, forgetting to mention that – in so far as this is true – it was Brexit, Farage‘s big project, that broke it. ‘Reform will fix it’, they say, while praising Donald Trump who is busy wrecking world trade. If Brexit and Trump are anything to go by, ‘Reform will f–k it up’, would be more accurate.
Next Thursday, make sure that the angry old men don’t get their way in Seaton & Colyton. Remember that in 2013, Farage’s first party, UKIP, came second here with over 1,300 votes.
We need to rally round Paul (right), a genuine local candidate with a strong track record. Don’t waste your vote on Labour, who like Reform and the Tories haven’t even got a local candidate. And don’t vote for John Heath, who although a good local councillor in Beer & Branscombe, can only take enough votes across the area to let Reform or the Tories sneak in.
Seaton & Colyton candidates announced
The candidates for the County Council election are now confirmed:
Paul Arnott (Lib Dem), the only candidate to publish where they live (in Colyton)
John Heath (Independent) who doesn’t say where he lives (but actually it’s in Beer)
Ben Ingham (Conservative) from Lympstone (Conservatives over there have obviously rejected as a candidate – why should we vote for him here?)
Paul Knott (Labour) from Exeter (they too couldn’t find anyone local to stand)
Jim Walsh (Reform UK), Donald Trump’s man, who also lives somewhere else in East Devon (but hasn’t said where).
So – only two local candidates. Paul Arnott has been active in local campaigns, against the Green Wedge and the closure of Seaton Hospital, for the last 15 years. Paul has the experience and reputation across the Seaton and Colyton area to defeat the Conservatives, who won last time. I’m proud to have seconded his nomination and urge everyone to vote for him on May 1st.
Trump’s man wants my vote – but can’t tell me who his candidate is
Donald Trump’s representative in the UK, Nigel Farage, has sent me a leaflet asking me to vote for a reform UK – but there is no indication of the candidate’s name, or even what the name of the ward is. While Trump prepares to break the British economy and dictate our laws, Farage is using oligarch money to trawl for votes based on generalities, with no knowledge or proposals for how our council should be run. Treat this arrogant approach with the contempt it deserves, and vote for a genuine local candidate with some idea where Seaton and Colyton are.
Your daily dump – Salcombe Regis had 366 sewage discharges in a year
“Of the 10 most frequently used overflows, five were in Devon. Another was in neighbouring Cornwall, meaning six were in the region served by South West Water (SWW).” How Devon’s beaches and rivers became the centre of the sewage crisis Sewage was spilt in one village in Devon 366 times in 2024, as the county…
— Read on eastdevonwatch.org/2025/03/29/devons-natural-beauty-is-being-destroyed-as-it-becomes-national-blackspot-for-sewage-spills/
Tory councillor who blocked attempt to save our Hospital stands down
Sara Randall-Johnson, Conservative chair of the Devon Health Scrutiny Committee for the last eight years, has given a farewell interview to the Midweek Herald in which she regrets that ‘more wasn’t done to improve health outcomes’ during her tenure. She puts NHS waiting lists down to the Covid lockdowns, forgetting that they had already ballooned due to her government’s cuts. In Seaton, she will always be remembered for making things worse – when Seaton Hospital’s beds were threatened in 2017, it was she who used her position as chair to block the referral of the proposal to the Secretary of State, sealing the fate of our campaign and laying the Hospital open to new threats like the one we’ve been fighting for the last 18 months.
https://www.midweekherald.co.uk/news/25034553.devon-efforts-improve-health-social-care-not-enough/
Covid vaccine for 75+ at Seaton Hospital
The NHS spring booster for the over 75s will be given at Seaton Hospital on Saturday 12 April. Book via the NHS app where there are other venues and dates too – or wait for the NHS to offer it to you. Covid is currently at a low ebb but there are new variants and it is still very much a serious threat to health.
Paul is our man in the County elections
In the County Council election on 1st May, Paul Arnott will be standing for the Liberal Democrats. Having represented Seaton & Colyton myself until 2021, I believe that he is best placed to speak up for the area. Paul has lived here for over a quarter of a century and has been involved in many local campaigns:
- He has fought to protect the Green Wedge for over a decade and played a key role in resolving the recent fiasco on the Planning Committee over the new application.
- He has campaigned hard for Seaton Hospital since the first threat to the beds in 2017, and recently ensured the EDDC made the Hospital a listed community asset, protecting it from demolition.
- As leader of EDDC, he brokered the deal for the Tramway to take over Seaton Jurassic.
I’ve known Paul for a decade and it is difficult to think of a more conscientious person we could have as our councillor. Both Conservative and Reform parties have announced candidates – but neither of them even lives in the area, and if either of them won we would be essentially unrepresented.
If you’d like help Paul leaflet or put up a placard, email paularnott@aol.com, phone 07850 038722, or contact me.
Seaton Hospital’s plight featured in The Guardian
As the steering committee elected in November 2023 still waits for a response to its proposals for the use of the threatened wing of Seaton Hospital – submitted to NHS Property Services and the Integrated Care Board in June 2024 – I’ve written a letter which is published in tomorrow’s Guardian.
www.theguardian.com/society/2025/mar/18/the-human-cost-of-yet-another-nhs-reorganisation
My comments to councillors about the Green Wedge site
I’ve written to councillors on the Planning Committee as follows:
Dear members of the Planning Committee,
I am unable to attend your meeting, but as Seaton’s former county councillor and having chaired a meeting of 150 residents on this issue in 2023, I wish to remind you of the strongly held objections of many residents to this scheme. As the report notes, the proposal conflicts with key policies of the local plan (development outside the BUAB, eroding the Green Wedge) and would have harmful landscape effects – these include on the environment near the Wetlands, the centre of EDDC’s tourist strategy for Seaton.
In addition, the site is not a genuinely sustainable location from a travel point of view, Colyford Road is not suitable for a large addition of traffic, and Seaton’s facilities are under severe strain from the substantial growth in population over the last few years which has not been matched by improved health or educational facilities – on the contrary, there have been sustained attempts to close parts of our hospital which have still not been resolved.
The report notes the real shortage of affordable housing, but Seaton has much experience of the unreliability of this kind of offer in outline applications. In 2013, the Tesco site was supposed to have 40 per cent affordable housing, then 25 per cent, before it became zero. Twelve years later, I don’t think EDDC has even received an overage payment from that huge project. The housing Seaton needs is not yet another large development made up mainly of retirement homes, but a specific proposal for actual social housing.
Previous applications of this kind for the same site have previously been rejected, including by an inspector, for many of the above reasons, as some members of the Committee will recall from their own roles in opposing them. I appreciate the difficult situation the Council has been put in, but I ask you not to approve this development.
Regards,
Martin Shaw
Local Plan – last chance to comment before it goes to Inspector
Local Plan Regulation 19 consultation – Thursday 13 February
— Read on content.govdelivery.com/accounts/UKEDDC/bulletins/3cd0c37
Seaton & Colyton MATTERS 