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The Bradworthy Wind Turbines
Councillor
Christie's Weblog
From your Torridge District Councillor Peter Christie
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23rd March '08
Well now its official. Torridge District Council looks set to disappear in the new future given moves by the government to impose ‘Unitary’ councils on Devon following Exeter’s failed bid to secede from the county. I should explain that a unitary council is a single all-purpose authority that would provide services currently supplied by Devon County and Torridge District. A ‘Review’ is currently going on to find the answer the government wants – I may sound cynical but it wasn’t that long ago that central government tried to impose unitary authorities all over Britain and was roundly rebuffed by many councils. The reason for this earlier lack of enthusiasm was a worry that we were drifting towards ‘regional government’ where councillors had to serve ever larger areas and so lost their connection to local people and issues – which would in the long run allow all power to be exercised from Whitehall. The argument in favour of unitaries has always been financial the thinking being that larger councils would achieve economies of scale. Sadly this doesn’t seem to apply to central government itself – or even Devon County Council so I don’t have a lot of confidence in the robustness of this argument. Nevertheless I’m willing to bet that Torridge could well be amalgamated with North Devon and sections of West Devon before too long. The alternative is Devon County Council taking over everything – and, if you were being honest, how much do you know about what goes on down in County Hall? Precious little I expect even though they spend the vast bulk of your council tax. Given the choice I would have to plump for a unitary Northern Devon authority as the lesser of two evils but we shall see. If you would like to hear what the county council think then there is a public meeting being held at Fremington Church Hall on the 26th March from 10 a.m. to 12 p.m. (yes that is the time given out by DCC). At our Full Torridge council meeting last week councillor Tony Inch did ask if the people in the district were going to be consulted and was told that the time scale was too tight for this to happen in any meaningful way – so much for democracy! Councillor Len Ford wanted to get rid of TDC as quickly as possible as he saw it as a failing council– which is rather odd when one considers how hard he fought to be elected to it only 10 months ago. I did point out that already county councillors seem to be out of touch with local feelings and quoted the recent fiasco over the county’s totally bizarre idea concerning the stainless steel walkways they were proposing to clip on to our old Bridge. If a county wide unitary does get the go-ahead I look forward to seeing how many councillors will be appointed. We do, after all, represent your views and if the numbers are cut dramatically then again this will be a loss in grassroots democracy – which all parties claim they espouse. Interesting times.
The newly built shop in Mill Street is now virtually complete. This is the one replacing the old ‘Card Cabin’ where the old building was demolished to allow access to the site behind – where a series of new houses have been constructed. Once the houses had been completed the new shop unit has been inserted on the site of the old one – and very fine it looks too and it fills in what was an ugly gap in the line of shop frontages. The whole scheme seems to have worked well but it will cause a headache to local historians of the future when they try to identify the area in old photographs. Such redevelopment is, of course, nothing new in the town’s history and anyone who has lived in Bideford for even a few years can probably call similar changes to mind. Such new investment is all a sign of commercial confidence in a town centre soon to be under pressure from Asda. It will be interesting to see how our small shops fare in the face of this new competition given my note above about the off licence in Meddon Street.
The Bideford Regeneration Initiative continues to move forward slowly though the latest twist and turn in its difficult progression is rather unexpected. At the Full Torridge District Council meeting referred to earlier I did ask about a rather strange note added to an item about funding of the BRI which seemed to indicate that North Devon District Council and Ilfracombe town council had somehow become intertwined with the BRI. I directed my question to councillor Chris Leather who is generally very well informed about the financial details of TDC and even he expressed puzzlement. It was left to the Chief Executive to explain that any bids to the Regional Development Agency for funds to progress regeneration would carry more weight if they were joined with requests from Ilfracombe - hence the link. Apparently we are asking for money to fund a Project Director and 2 Project Managers who, if appointed, will somehow share their time between Bideford and Ilfracombe – and yes I did ask if they were putting in the same amount of money as we were and received the assurance that this was the case – though what a pity that no Bideford councillors seemed to have been told about this new approach. This does seem to confirm my previously expressed view about the breakdown in communications between the BRI and local councillors.
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