Rural broadband and mobile phone coverage – progress needs to be seen
The County’s Corporate Infrastructure and Regulatory Services Scrutiny Committee (CIRS), on which I sit, has set up a standing Task Group to monitor rural broadband and mobile phone coverage. Roll-out of broadband by Connecting Devon and Somerset (CDS), which has public funds to fill the gaps where commercial providers will not go, has been slow, they say because of the providers, and CDS is not sufficiently open to public scrutiny. At the November meeting, East Devon broadband campaigner, Graham Long, complained about the issue being dealt with by a task group which meets in private. I urged the committee to be aware of the frustration felt by those still without access to reliable broadband and the need to be seen to be urgently seeking progress.
Mobile phone coverage is of great concern in Branscombe and other rural parishes in the division. Unfortunately the committee was told that mobile phone providers would not agree to talk to us. However it emerged that the Heart of the South West Local Economic Partnership (LEP) has earmarked £2.5m to address phone coverage issues, although they have not yet decided how.
Action on speeding – Colyford to get new Vehicle Activated Sign
I have authorised funding for the erection of a Vehicle Activated Sign near Gully Shoot at the western entrance to Colyford – which will flash up ’30, Slow Down’ to anyone driving over the speed limit – from my County Councillor’s Locality Budget. (A similar sign has recently been erected on Seaton Down Hill.)
The Colyford Speedwatch Team, Colyton parish councillors and I have agreed in principle that it is desirable to erect a second VAS at the other end of Colyford. I am paying in full for the first VAS in order to make progress within the current financial year, on the understanding that funding for a second VAS will be a matter for Colyton Parish Council to consider in budgeting for the coming financial year.
I am working with the Speedwatch teams in Colyford and Seaton Down Hill as well as the A35 Action Group in Wilmington to mitigate speeding in the area. At an earlier meeting with Neil Parish MP and Councillor Stuart Hughes, Highways agreed to install a crossing in Colyford and a pedestrian refuge in Seaton Down Hill, as well as to look again at the speed limit on the hill (which we want reduced to 40).
New monthly report available on Seaton & Colyton Matters
My monthly reports, which include some matters that aren’t posted separately on this blog, are published towards the end of this month on this site, at the same time as they are sent to parish councils for the next month’s meetings. My latest report is just up at seatonmatters.org/monthly-reports/
CCG refuses to give details of NHS cuts, Tories block attempts to record concerns – Claire Wright’s account of yesterday’s Health Scrutiny
Claire Wright, Independent member of Devon’s Health Scrutiny Committee, has given a full account of how the latest meeting revealed the growing crisis in Devon’s NHS, the CCG’s arrogant refusal to give detailed information demanded by councillors, and the obsessive blocking by the committee’s Conservative members of any attempt to record concerns. My proposal about community hospitals, mentioned by Claire at the end of her report, lives for another day, and I will write about it shortly.
I’m making a new proposal to safeguard community stakes in community hospitals, tomorrow at Health Scrutiny
Community hospitals in Devon have always been built and maintained with a high degree of community involvement and support. In many cases, local communities took the initiative to build the hospitals and raised substantial part of the original funding, or even the entire funding of additional wings and facilities, as well as contributing to staff and other running costs, the introduction of new specialist services, etc.
Unlike Private Finance Initiatives undertaken in partnership with private companies, these ‘community finance initiatives’ – which sought no profit from their investments other than the improvement of the facilities and services they enabled – appear not to have secured their interests in the hospitals they helped to build. The Leagues of Friends and others who raised funds for hospitals trusted that their investments would continue to be used for the benefit of place-based health services in their local area.
Since the 2012 Health and Social Care Act, however, the organisation of the NHS has changed and the ownership of NHS buildings is in the process of being transferred to a new company, NHS Property Services, wholly owned by the Secretary of State and charged with managing the NHS estate in line with national priorities. NHS Property Services is enabled to sell off parts of the estate and to charge NHS organisations market rents for their use of NHS buildings.
This change creates dilemmas for local communities which have invested in Devon community hospitals. Clearly Leagues of Friends and other local bodies, including town and parish councils as representatives of communities which have raised large amounts of funding, can be considered ‘stakeholders’ in community hospitals. However these community stakeholders appear not to possess formal rights in the ownership and governance of the hospitals.
The proposal is that the Health and Adult Care Scrutiny undertake an investigation into
1. The changing ownership and governance of community hospitals in Devon and its implications.
2. The historic and ongoing contributions of local communities and Leagues of Friends to funding the hospitals.
The purpose of this investigation would be to address the question of
3. How community stakeholders’ interests should be secured in the future governance of community hospitals.
It is envisaged that in the course of this investigation, the Committee would both collect evidence and invite expressions of views from all stakeholders, including both local community organisations and NHS bodies, including NHS Property Services.
Aftermath of the Diviani vote
I don’t want to comment at length on last week’s confidence vote at EDDC (which I missed while away for a week). I was pleased to hear that there were excellent public speeches, including from Seaton Mayor, Jack Rowland, and that two of Seaton’s councillors, Jim Knight and Peter Burrows, voted ‘no confidence’ in Paul Diviani, whose vote prevented Health Scrutiny from referring the beds decision to the Secretary of State.
I was disappointed to see that our third councillor, Marcus Hartnell, justified support for Diviani, seeing the attacks on him as purely politically motivated (apparently all other local councillors, for Coly Valley, Beer, Trinity and Axminster, also supported Diviani).
I would just like to put on record my belief that no council leader should be able to abandon the communities he represents without paying a high political price. I hope that the no-confidence motion will warn councillors aware that there will be an even greater public reaction, should they fail to block attempts to close any of our community hospitals in the forthcoming CCG Estates Strategy.
Budleigh victory saves hospital garden from Clinton Devon development
A planning inspector has ruled against Clinton Devon Estates’ attempt to build houses on half of the Budleigh Salterton hospital garden (the hospital is one that has already lost its beds): https://eastdevonwatch.org/2017/09/07/clinton-devon-estates-and-budleigh-hospital-garden-a-pr-nightmare-for-today-and-tomorrow/
EDDC Leader faces ‘no confidence’ motion over his vote to condemn Seaton and Honiton hospital beds
EDDC Leader, Cllr Paul Diviani, will face a vote of ‘no confidence’ next Wednesday, 13 September at a special meeting of the Council, over his vote to block the referral of the CCG’s hospital beds closures to the Secretary of State – which effectively condemned the beds in Seaton, Honiton, Okehampton and Whipton:
- ‘On Tuesday 25th July 2017, Cllr Diviani chose not to represent the opinions of this Council or the people we represent at the DCC Health and Adult Care Scrutiny Committee meeting when he was clearly expected to do so. This Council no longer has confidence in Cllr Diviani’s commitment to represent our collective interests nor lead our East Devon communities as the figurehead for local government. We call for his resignation.’
Proposed by Councillor Ben Ingham, seconded by Councillor Val Ranger and supported by Councillors Cathy Gardner, Matt Coppell, Marianne Rixson, Rob Longhurst, Dawn Manley, Geoff Jung, Peter Faithfull, Susie Bond, Roger Giles, Matt Booth, Peter Burrows, Steve Gazzard, Megan Armstrong and Douglas Hull.
Members of the public can speak for up to 3 minutes each at the beginning of the meeting.
A slightly abridged version of my reply to Cllr Diviani is published in today’s Midweek Herald (below).
Health Scrutiny Chair should consider her position after rebuke and the County must act to restore confidence in scrutiny of NHS
My press release:
Devon County Council’s Health and Adult Care Scrutiny Chair, Councillor Sara Randall Johnson (right), should immediately consider her position following the stinging rebuke issued to her by the Council’s Standards Committee. The Council should also act to restore the credibility of Health Scrutiny, since its failure to fully scrutinise the removal community hospital beds in Honiton, Okehampton and Seaton has destroyed public confidence in its activities across a large swathe of Devon.
At its meeting on 29 August, minutes of which are published today, the Standards Committee agreed that while Cllr Randall Johnson had not broken the Members’ Code of Conduct, she should ‘be strongly reminded of the importance of the work of scrutiny committees – reinforcing the value of neutrality in scrutiny both generally and in calling the “health service” to account – and the need to be seen to be even handed and scrupulously fair, recognising that failure to do so may be perceived as a deliberate act.’
The call for a Scrutiny Chair to ‘be strongly reminded of the importance of the work’ of her committee, and of the value of neutrality and being seen to be even-handed and fair, is unprecedented and should lead Cllr Randall Johnson to immediately consider her position. There is no public confidence that she will lead the committee to carry out full and impartial scrutiny of NHS decision-making.
Effects on the Council’s reputation
The Standards Committee also ‘accepts that the events of the Health and Adult Care Scrutiny Committee meeting on 25 July 2017 may not reflect well on individual Members or upon the Council as a whole, and further recognises that the perception gained by persons present at the meeting or subsequently viewing the webcast is not that which would have been desired’.
This stark acknowledgement of the damage done to Devon County Council’s reputation also requires early action by the Council to reassure the public that the Committee will do its job properly in future and protect the NHS in Devon.
The Scrutiny Committee ignored the views of local communities and their representatives and has allowed the CCG to get away with damaging cuts. The Council must now consider how to restore people’s faith that it will protect all our community hospitals in the future. I shall ensure that this is discussed when the Council meets on 5th October.
Seaton & Colyton MATTERS 