On Sunday 20th Jan 2019 Sally and the team will be carrying out their monthly litter pick of Horndean and Clanfield. All volunteers are welcome, especially new faces. The meeting point is at the far end of Morrisons Car Park at 9:30.
All of the equipment is provided and you can pick the areas close to where you live to pick.
Children from across the district are in for a treat on Christmas Day thanks to East Hampshire District Council staff and councillors. More than 200 Christmas presents have been bought, wrapped and delivered to children who were put forward by local schools and charities.
Cllr Julie Butler said: “We know that there are some children across the district who would really appreciate a present on Christmas Day and may not be as fortunate as their friends. I am so proud that EHDC staff and councillors really got behind this scheme again and bought more than 200 gifts. We had a record amount this year and had so many presents that they couldn’t all fit in the van! A really great effort from everyone. It’s wonderful that as a council we can make a little difference and bring some happiness to our local children over Christmas.”
The scheme was arranged by the Alton Buckle Local Children’s Partnership which works with schools and charities. The partnership provided a list of local children’s ages and genders, allowing staff and councillors to pick out an appropriate present.
The gifts were handed on to the partnership which will then deliver them to the children for a wonderful surprise on Christmas Day.
Jen Hammersley, from the Local Children’s Partnership said: “Some families really struggle at this time of year as it can be very expensive, you don’t understand how much the families and the children will appreciate your generosity. The presents will mean so much to those children who otherwise might not have received any. They will bring smiles and happiness to the children on Christmas morning.”
If you are a local business and would like to take part in this scheme next year by inviting your staff to take part please let me know on guy.shepherd@easthants.gov.uk and I will put you in touch with the team. Each gift should be about £20 and if you like we are happy to organise the gift and wrap it if you just want to collect cash.
So nearly 3 years ago LEOH was given outline planning permission for 700 homes along with a care village and plenty of community facilities. The planning conditions that were put onto the permission were very onerous to protect against any possible risk to the water supply.
All along the coast there is a strip of land several hundred metres wide where the geology has a very thin layer of clay covering the chalk below which contains natural below ground water pathways that rise at a number of locations, one of which is The Bedhampton Springs.
This thin strip has ‘Solution features’ which we may better know as ‘Sinkholes’ or vertical pathways where any pollutant could get from the surface to the water table. HERE is an earlier blog giving more detail.
In the last few years a significant amount of site investigation work has been carried out drilling boreholes and plotting the solution features to agree an updated site layout with Portsmouth Water. As a result Bloor Homes are submitting an up to date outline planning application for Hazleton and Pyle Farms with details of the cricket pitch and care village to follow. The development will still come with the same list of community benefits, public open space, highways improvements as the original application and we are discussing what else we get for the additional 150 homes.
The site investigation results show that there are in-fact very few solution features on the land and that gives opportunity for a better layout and an additional 150 homes which prevents us having to find another area of green field land to build on elsewhere. (See blog earlier this week about The Local Plan).
So here is the updated masterplan which forms part of the updated application and we have asked Bloor Homes to conduct an updated consultation on the revised layout. The public display was held at Merchistoun Hall a few days ago but for anyone who could not get to it a full set of the display boards is below with details on how to comment.
To download the consultation boards click on this link here: Bloor Homes Horndean Exhibition Banners Dec 2018
If you would like to give feedback on this consultation please can you email it to BOTH Bloor Homes on info@exhibitionfeedback.co.uk AND copy in the Ward Councillor Cllr Elaine Tickell on elaine.tickell@easthants.gov.uk Please can you do this by the 7th January 2019.
To view the updated Outline Application please click on this link HERE where you can also post a comment before the 11th January 2019 for the case officer to review.
It isn’t often (in fact this is the first time) that I bite back with the local paper but The Horndean Post deserves a response which is a shame as The Post has usually been pretty fair. As the Finance Portfolio Holder at EHDC I could have addressed every point in The Horndean Post before they went to print but was not contacted.
The article entitled “Council spends millions in loans… on the quiet” manages to turn a great news story into an article with a negative slant so lets put some more flesh on the bone and give some more detail.
Over the last 5 years the funding EHDC receives has been cut significantly with the ‘Revenue Support Grant’ (the annual grant from central government) of about £2.5m dropped to zero and other grant income totalling a further 3.5m being progressively reduced. This leaves EHDC with a shortage of £6m every year – or about 25% of our running cost.
So, with options being to cut services or massively increase council tax, we decided to look for other solutions and did something about it. This was a multi-pronged approach including the following:
1 – Cutting the excessive fat from old style cosy easy going local councils
2 – Starting up new profit making businesses
3 – Cost savings by partnership working with other Local Authorities
4 – Long term investment portfolio for secure income
EHDC and Havant merged the senior management team of directors which has saved both Councils about £1.5m a year in salaries without affecting service. We were one of the first local authorities to consider such an unusual approach and it has been a major success for the last 8 or so years.
EHDC has some exceptionally talented officers and some lead Councillors who are or have been board directors of large successful local, national and international businesses – This gives a great opportunity for this business capability to be applied to EHDC to transform it from a traditional District Council to a modern efficient stable organisation.
We also spoke to other local Councils to look at how we could deliver the same service for less money and for services like waste disposal for example and we joined with Winchester to create a larger customer base with Biffa and a lower cost. Now that contract is ending we have just changed this to work with Havant to keep this saving moving forward. We have been able to replace the lost income every year without increasing Council tax by making EHDC more business like and through investment AND increased our services.
The property investment strategy is one we have been working on for two years – it isn’t a new stealthy initiative.
The £6.5m a year property investment will generate an income is worth £125 every year to every household in EHDC that we do not need to charge in increased tax or lost services. That has to be a GREAT NEWS story – and it is!!!
Below is a pie chart of our income. Property is a significant part of our future income. It is in fact the same size as our council tax. Not only do we secure significant cash funding from this we also generate £4m a year in rent which we do not take as income to pay off the equity in the property. In addition we build up a similar sum each year in equity as the properties grow in value.
Our multi pronged approach means that for the last 5 years we have been able to continue to provide every service to the community with no cuts. In fact, for several years out of the surplus funds we have generated we have paid for an additional 3 PCSO’s to help support the police, brought in £368,000 a year in grant funding to help local causes with £4,500 every year for local Councillors to support local good causes and several other initiatives that have also gone missed by the local press…
So in the front page of paper this week it is reported that “No trace of the spending spree can be found in easy-to-access public documents” – As a matter of fact this has been brought to 2 annual budget reports at Full Council meetings and also 3 Full Council meetings where the policy to buy property to raise funds was agreed. All of these are available online in the meeting minutes but more importantly were discussed in public forum for anyone including the press to hear being debated.
If only the press turned up at EHDC meetings occasionally then they would know all about this – in fact the cabinet meeting at EHDC tonight was the first time I have seen a reporter at an EHDC meeting for 3 or 4 years… So much for being held to account by anyone, let alone the press, who might otherwise know what was going on…
The story also explains that back bench Councillors are only told about the deals after they have been carried out – That is simple, we are bidding in a competitive market for property and the last thing we are going to do is publish our bids before deadlines to let every other local authority or investment institution know what we are willing to pay. The system is simple, we agree a strategy with all members and then get on and carry it out.
The story also notes that consultants are paid a finders fee – this is correct, just like an estate agent charges for marketing a property and securing a buyer.
So as this is being portrayed with a negative slant are EHDC doing anything wrong?
No. Property investment is being used by local authorities up and down the country to replace key income that is being lost from grant funding to ensure we can continue to provide all of our services. Our strategy has been audited by our audit and scrutiny panel as well as external auditors.Tthis is just a good business decision being carried out effectively.
Pension funds, hedge funds and a dozen other institutions also rely on property as a steady secure income and we have the advantage that we can secure funding at about 1.6% (Compare that with your mortgage rate), we have no expensive shareholder or management charges and every pound in profit goes to us, the council tax payer, and no one else. Not only do we get the income but we also get the equity growth in the property as a future bonus.
The Tesco EHDC has bought for £40m brings in £900,000,00 a year in income from a business that will be trading next year and every year for the foreseeable future – that means we don’t need to increase Council Tax to supplement this income.
As a resident of EHDC I fully support the this strategy. It underpins a low cost Council Tax base while making sure that not only can we continue to provide all of our services but also to pick up some of the services the Police, HCC and others can not afford to continue to carry out.
Holding any elected member to account is essential and part of this is the political opposition but the other part is the press. For this to be effective they need to be present at the meetings where issues are debated and I would guess this topic to have been covered at no less than 5 public meetings at EHDC.
So, I hope this helps put this great news story into context with the full story turning and helps explain how EHDC have the accolade of being the best performing District Council in the country when you look at Council Tax increases.
As to the headline “Council spends millions in loans… on the quiet” – it isn’t that it was on the quiet, just that no one was there listening when we debated it in public and agreed to do it.
For a list of the properties EHDC owns visit this link HERE
Guy.
Our current Local Plan runs from 2017 to 2028 and when we prepared this in 2012 we held local consultations which brought us to a large site at Hazleton and Pyle Farms with a comprehensive development that protected the smaller sites in our community. If you were living here at the time you will remember the flood of speculative housing applications that we had to fight off.
Every 5 years the local plan has to be revised to make sure that it is up to date, we are meeting our housing needs and that it takes on board new government policy – If we do not keep it up to date then developers can apply to build on pretty much any bit of land and provided it is sustainable, not in a flood plane and other basic criteria, would have a good chance at success.
So, this part of the local plan focuses on our needs from 2028 to 2036, a further 8 years ahead.
There is one complication – EHDC used to be responsible for all of the planning in the district. Since the formation of The South Downs National park the park who control the majority of the land take only about 10% of the housing – something that we had to manage in the last local plan. Our local plan covers only the parts controlled by EHDC.
So, in the last review of the Local Plan the SDNPA tool about 1,000 homes in the plan period and the parts of EHDC outside of the park 10,000 homes. We were able to accommodate a very large number of these in the former Army barracks at Whitehill and Bordon which helped.
The good news is that the housing numbers across the district remain about the same post review so we are not looking at a major increase like we had in 2023 but just the same steady amount.
The next bit of good news is that LEOH has the ability to take about 100 more homes than the previous allocation which means we can avoid building on dozens of acres of green field land elsewhere.
The final major bit of good news is that we are identifying timescales when the new allocated sites can be built on so that we don’t end up with a sudden surge in housing but make sure the build rate is slow and steady.
The proposed maps for Clanfield, Rowlands Castle and Horndean are below (please remember this is the draft plana and will be going to consultation shortly, details below)
HORNDEAN SITES:
SA 33 Horndean LEOH – additional 850 homes – 2020 to 2028
SA 34 Lovedean land to rear of 191 to 211 – 33 homes – 2030 to 2032
SA 35 Catherington Parsonage Farm – 5 homes -2030 to 2031
SA 36 Lovedean Cottage Farm, James Copse – 75 to 85 homes – 2023 to 2026
SA 37 Lovedean Woodcroft Farm – 70 to 180 homes – 2023 – 2027
So this is the Draft copy which is going to be reviewed internally and go out for public consultation between 5th February and 19 March 2019 for a 6 week period. When the final consultation copy is prepared I will publish it here with the consultation links and how to respond.
In the meantime the draft copy (all 380 pages long) can be downloaded on this link and you can find the details for Clanfield, Horndean and Rowlands Castle on pages 115 to 139: Local plan Review 2017 – 2036 This also gives more detail on each individual allocated site.
Appendix A which talks about how the plan is developed, how Neighbourhood plans are incorporated and the duty to cooperate (with adjacent planning authorities) can be downloaded here: Local plan Review 2017 – 2036 Appendix A
Appendix B which is the maps for the entire EHDC region can be downloaded here: Local plan Review 2017 – 2036 Appendix B
If the land is not on these maps then it is not going to have a look in until 2037.
