Question to the Execuitive . . failed.

I made a request to ask a question of the executive a month ago and asked if permission to film would be given.

Both were agreed.

Today I got to ask my question. Cllr David Lee was ill so Rob Stanton stood in and I was impressed by his chairing. Disspointed I was not allowed to express the reasoning behind my concerns but he let it go on for a while.

My Question.

Why have planning and scrutiny meetings been left off the list of those that may be filmed by the public?

If the Council is concerned about misrepresentation then this is true of any meeting. They can arrange for the filming to be recorded themselves. If you choose not to then have the added benefit your legally protected from misrepresentation and have the means to publicise against those that do. 

The public however have no evidence, save the proceeding of these meetings should they feel that Cllrs have said one thing and done another. At present the minutes go through weeks of approval and I have noticed missed out disconcerting points from public forums.

I was going to add a link to the verbatim minutes. But since they are far from verbatim I have just provided a link to the video. Run this in another window and read on. Links to the agenda and minutes are in the video description. 

http://youtu.be/mrZ5qg1SC7I

The response was as expected. They are nervous and thinking about it.

I ab libbed a bit at the beginning of my response. I was in the presence of a group of people controlling probably 3 billion pounds worth of development who were effectively reducing transparency until after the deals have been made!

Non-verbatim minutes and scrutinized by those of their choosing? No. I simply reminded them they they are obligated under the constitution to support transparency unless is it clearly in the public interest not to do so, badly as you will see in the video.

My action planned follow up question.

"I have made no effort to hide that I fear there are corrupt relationships between the local elected and employed council and local businessmen specifically developers. (pause)

I guess corruption is a hard word. Some may simply call it jobs for the boys or helping a friend. Nether the less there is no way of proving intent or otherwise, and this is not good for democracy.

There is most definitely motive.

Outside of creating and controlling government contracts the primary motive is the value of the land increasing when permission is granted to build. Taking that increase at an average of 100 thousand pounds per dwelling, and with 13 thousand dwellings"

This is about where I got cut off. Not in a rude way bust asked if there was a question and I stated that I have four constitutional proposals that I would ask them to support. They said I can submit them tomorrow in some way. I'll update this when I can reference the video. And regarding the point that they are constitutionally bound to support further transparency the answer was a repeat of the first and did not actually touch on that point.

This is what I did not get to ask.

" in in the SDl’s alone that is £1.3 billion pounds of motive to ensure the local community do not get the lion share and most definitely ensure that the national policy for house building does not result in, present value compulsory purchases of their family and friends speculative assets.

But how would I provide ROI as a crony councillor other than deciding who can look at the contracts.

Firstly I would make consultations uninteresting. This can be achieved with word only invitations that do nothing to engage the reader or expose that which might be objectionable, to put up no large poster on the Wellington House displaying what was being considered back in 2007 and provide no advance notice of planning change on Elms field.

Secondly. Anyone interested enough to find their way to the dreary consultation website should be presented with an illogical bombardment 1000’s of pages of pdfs with no single concise or engaging summary.

Then I will bury the evidence and draw conclusions that have no bearing on what was said.

I may even ask a friend, to ask a question in public, at a key moment designed to imply support where there is none.

Yes. Were I earning my crony keep this is how I would do it.

I therefore ask my follow up question. Will you support these constitutional changes that will reduce the impact of cronies in local government if any should ever get in.

1.To call for and vote in favour of a motion that no consultation period can start until a single document that contains the most important points and can be understood by the target audience in under 10 minutes is made available as the primary point of reference. Further detailed information will be available as links from that document.

2.To call for and vote in favour of a motion that no consultation period can start until  a transparent on line discussion forum is made. This could take the form of a Facebook group but must be open. A link must be in a prominent place on the consultation web page.

3.To call for and vote in favour than no consultation period can start unless it is is suitably publicised. This should include the provision of public information boards at the entrance to supermarkets, front page coverage in the local paper, a banner in the locality and in all instances include a layout image.

4.To call for and vote in favour of a motion that a separate 100 random constituents consultation is conducted to gauge if vested interests may be influencing the responses.

Thank you.

The chap who was supposed to ask the following question from the Agenda right after me never showed up, I guess my computer is being monitored as he was accounted for in my question. Alex Forrest you bugger!

"What is Wokingham Borough Council currently doing to show national government that Wokingham Borough Council is on top form and keeping in line with its proposals for implementing national strategy at a local level?"

At least their gamesmanship is transparent.

I would like to remind everyone that in the UK there is a right to film in public.

Erick Pickles has given clear guidance to Councillors to allow filming of all public meetings to be used how the blogger sees fit, the normal laws surrounding misrepresentation sufficient to act on abuses.

So our execuitives have given nothing. The have simply gone from not as transparent as they could be to a bit less.

There is one important point here. Enshrined in the constitution solely for the purpose of limiting the potential for corruption.

They must act in favour of transparency unless it is clearly in the public interest not to do so.

It would appear that each and every member of our Executive are in breach of the constitution.

What happens next? Don't leave it to me. Please. I'm tired.

Negligent or intentional?

We all have our areas of expertise, but few people are unaware that information needs to be prepared in a suitable manner for its intended audience.

A good guideline for something like public consultation on a development might be 10 pages containing the main salient points and a marked up overall image. 

Failing this information people simply do not have the time and are put off from getting involved.

A step further towards informing people and not wasting time covering the same points would be to provide an open online forum to discuss further and for the council to activly engage on there.

A good way of putting people off is providing them with 1000's of pages of documentation filed in such a way that the intended users are unable to work out what is relevant to them and what is relevant to a lawyer, and maintaining one on one verbal dialogues that can later be ignored. A good example of this is our insane 0.5 car journeys 8am-9am per dwelling statistic that for some reason is a new conversation every time.

My question to you is. Are the examples below negligent . . or intentional?

http://www.wokingham.gov.uk/planning/policy/ldf/managingdevelopmentdelivery/examination/?categoryesctl5504765=5760

http://www.wokingham.gov.uk/transport/roads/northwokinghamdistributorroad/

Whether you consider the above neglectful of duty, or intentional to push through what they want over the NIMBYs they must retain the votes of, please try to clip the wings of the dishonest and 

The www.nocheappromises.org to this would like to see are...

1.To call for and vote in favor of a motion that no consultation period can start until a single document that contains the most important points and can be understood by the target audience in under 10 minutes is made available as the primary point of reference. Further detailed information will be available as links from that document.

2.To call for and vote in favor of a motion that no consultation period can start until  a transparent online discussion forum is made. This could take the form of a Facebook group but must be open. A link must be in a prominent place on the consultation web page.

3.To call for and vote in favor than no consultation period can start unless it is is suitably publicized. This should include the provision of public information boards at the entrance to supermarkets, front page coverage in the local paper, a banner in the locality and in all instances include a layout image.

4.To call for and vote in favor of a motion that a separate 100 random constituents consultation is conducted to gauge if vested interests may be influencing the responses.

North Wokingham SDL, 1500 houses. Do not hand our money to land owners. Make them pay for the infrastructure.

North Wokingham SDL has approx 1500 houses.

Does the  bypass neutralize the additional congestion or is fully funded from the development. And that is using a 0.5 journeys per household between 8am & 9am to calculate road use limits. Me and both my neighbors average 2.5 each.

The consultation is open now and not for long so 'Have your say'

It is worth going to the exhibition in the town center to confirm my info and ask more questions.

As you can see from the website, the council has used the 'swamp you too much information' approach if you hope to self educated online. Intentional?

http://www.wokingham.gov.uk/transport/roads/northwokinghamdistributorroad/

The survey is very quick. a few check boxes and a opinion bit which I just put the same twice.

Here is mine. (I did a Kaz. The real one has even more errors)

----------------------------------------------------
It is a requirement that the new developments do not make congestion worse for existing residents. All of the options appear to have a negative impact on Winnersh Crossroads many and I recieved confirmation today that calculations have been made using a low national average of 0.5 journeys per house hold 8am-9am. This is clearly not realistic for the area. We are 3 in the winter.

The developers were awarded an outline planning permission that negotiated a section 106 contribution that was expected expect to create congestion neutral infrastructure. But the agreement is only £20k towards infrastructure as well as 35% affordable housing (which is sold at approximate cost of land and build being 60%)

Since the land use change is worth perhaps £100k average per dwelling there is £45k profit per dwelling for doing nothing.

I understand that the developers wish to make a worth while risk % and that they have negotiated an agreement with speculative land owners who have agreed a cut on approval of the planning permission.

The stale mate seems to be with the speculative land owners who should not be getting millions of pounds for their land changing use before they sell it and the community therefore paying for their next even bigger speculative land owning trusts following land / property investment.

If the developers are unable to design a congestion change neutral solution where they they fully fund the infrastructure under the financial terms of the current outline planning permission then this is their problem not ours and they should renegotiate with the land owners and us.

If there is no movement, but we must build the houses owing to national policy then it would appear that the community would get the best value from a compulsory purchase of the land.
--------------------------------------------

Now do yours

http://consultations.wokingham.gov.uk/distributorroad_northwokingham/distributorroad_northwokingham.htm?Consultation%20on%20North%20Wokingham%20Distributor%20Road

For the big picture with my comments in one place. Let me know if you have more comments to add. Right click this and select 'Save Target As' or something like that depending on your browser.

Is our share of £1.3 billion worth of planning profit Wokingham Borough Councils SDLs subsidising the Tories?

When I first discovered that we had SDL's (strategic development locations) that involved developing on green belt I was disappointed, but then again all three big parties are burying their heads in the environmental sand and printing another year of artificial GDP in the form of land use change, from land that regenerates to land that consumes.

Unlike the Town Centers mostly housing development, the council has decided to be more active at a consultation level, possibly as a result of the bad rap they are getting from previous Tory voters for cashing in on every patch of the 'Historic Market Town's' open spaces, lack of school spaces and increased congestion and pollution.

Possibly because....

Wokingham Borough Council January 2012 ITEM NO: 61.00 TITLE Audit Commission Annual Plan 2011/12 

"Has concluded that there is Risks with the mismanagement and potential  misreporting by the use of council owned companies."
"The town centre redevelopment is being funded by the Council at a time of economic uncertainty. There is a risk that failure to deliver the anticipated returns will have an impact on your financial resilience"

"At present the progress of the Transformation Programme does not take place in a public meeting. There is a risk that existing reporting lines do not enable effective scrutiny of progress by members outside of executive and other interested stakeholders."

Fairly damning. 

Then in July Tory Cllr Alistair Corrie signed off the £100m contract penned by Tory Cllr Matt Deegan the morning before publishing the plan which is now spun as 'Too Late' to change.

I managed to find a member of the public who was involved in the consultation who unfortunately wishes not to be named. They did however state that is was not a consultation. They were there to be shoe horned into an option. This is why the progress needed to be public.

Why did the National Audit Office think that the process enabled certain individuals to abuse their situation?

The Report

Then the finance and ownership details of the £100m contract are blocked from freedom of information.

Anyway. Back on topic. In 2010 we adopted a core strategy that selected strategic development locations around the borough. There is a lot of profit to be made in changing the use of land. 

What is a 1 acre field worth? £100k (although it is worth a lot less, just inflated because of the potential to get planning permission.

How much does it cost to build ten 3 bedroom houses plus the road for them using even local labor  £110k each?. 

How much will they sell for in Wokingham. £280k+

£160k per house - 35% affordable housing - £20k infrastructure / dwelling (apparently recently up from £8k) = £84k / dwelling profit.

It would appear mad that we as a council did not compulsory purchase the land, interest rates are very low at the moment, commission a good design, then sell the plots, with planning permission to developers, who would profit from the build. Perhaps £20k per dwelling. Not four times that figure for the developer and family trust fund.

The incentive for corruption is very real so what rang my alarm bells? When I asked to film the first Southern SDL meeting and was immediately given permission my concerns were put at ease.

However, at the last minute, permission was revoked. The argument being that some people might not participate because the presentation was being filmed.

This spurned a fairly heated debate in which a certain Tory Cllr Baker lied on getwokingham that...

 "Full marks to Kaz for only telling part of the story. He has been told that we have every intention of filming all the SDL Forums and have even suggested he could "pitch" for the business. Unfortunately we simply did not have the time to organise it and we did had some indication of people not being comfortable with this. 

Two weeks is simply not time enough to get the Churchs permission and to alert all attendees that we would be filming. Whatever we do we cannot put barriers in place which stops resident participation. So this has to be handled carefully.

Cllr Keith Baker
12/02/2013 at 19:32 Offensive or Inappropriate? 

With the above in play I had not only lost all faith, but it became, in my mind, a likely hood that something underhand was going on, that we can not trust what is said and that what is said must be documented so at least if the public are getting ripped of to the tune of £65k per dwelling, it will have to be done using financial wizardry that is open to scrutiny by people outside their control.

Since we as collective idiots voted for them I guess we have ourselves to blame.

Please look at www.nocheappromises.org as a possible solution (if there is indeed a problem) join the facebook group and get involved.

Information without the Freedom Request.

Last year I asked on the last day. This year I've managed to ask on the first day.

For those other skeptics who have the impression that there may be something rather sinister going on with some of our slippery elected council and those they work closely with, we do have some democratic rights designed to make hiding money trails more difficult and therefore limit foul play.

From @Kaz4Woking to @WokinghamBC When is the next 20 day 12.1.4.14 Transparency Reporting as set by the your external auditor?

From @WokinghamBC to @Kaz4Wokingham Hi Kaz, we've been informed that they should be up later today (September 12).

I have included some interesting text from rules and highlighted the bot that is relevant right now.


12.1.4.15 The Chief Financial Officer will publish details on council payments and contracts for goods and services worth more than £500 on the Council's website to show residents how the Council spends its budget.

12.1.4.16 The Chief Financial Officer will make available (on request) all the books, deeds, contracts, bills, vouchers and receipts relating to all expenditure within the councils accounts to any member of the public for a period of 20 working days each year in accordance with statutory regulations.

12.1.4. I7 Strategic Directors shall ensure that adequate records of books, deeds, contracts, bills, vouchers and receipts relating to all expenditure within their service area are readily available and can be produced to the Chief Financial Officer when responding to a request from a member of the public during either the statutory period or as part of a Freedom of lnformation Act request.

12.1.4. I8 The Chief Financial Officer will publish details of Councillor allowances and expenses on the Council's website on an annual basis as part of the transparency reporting. The Chief Financial Officer will also publish details of officers who hold senior positions in the council and what their job descriptions are and total remuneration (eg, salaries, bonus'payments, pension payments and expenses) has been for the previous year.

So. If you are wondering what exactly the £100m contract for the town center means regarding who pays what for what, what we valued the paddocks car park at as a property development or how it costs £45k to put a toilet back? Now is your chance.


When you were canvassed in the last election did you get the impression from those who came to your door or leaflet that their candidate wanted to represent your view? That they would keep you informed? That they would seek out a consensus before passing important motions?

In 2007 your Tory elected council changed the use of Elms so they could sell it and build on it. Were you asked by your Councillor? Did they even mention the idea when they canvassed you? Why not? What would you do were you inclined to stand?

You don't know them. Gag the spin. Demand clear facts.

The good ones will give you . . www.nocheappromises.org