Somerset this week: 19 January
Polls in an election year, the food we won't be growing, prescription charges via the back door and developers paying less for infrastructure. Plus ça change....
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Somerset this week: 19 January
Polls cause excitement
Well yes and no. We appreciate that especially in a General Election year some of you will be calling down a plague on all of their houses. But nevertheless the big news of the week was the publication of a YouGov poll. Especially as it is one of the first polls based on the new constituencies - the ones that will be fought over at the next General Election. The YouGov model used 14,110 respondents answering between 12 December and 4 January.
If the pollsters were right it would be a first. But if they were, then it would see Keir Starmer enter Downing Street with a 120-seat majority for Labour.
But what about our little patch of Somerset? No gains for Labour here. Well not strictly true if we look at the historic county of Somerset . The constituency of Weston super Mare is now called for Labour. That would see John Penrose (best known as the husband of Dido Harding, she of COVID 19 fame) lose his seat.
But elsewhere the predications are for the usual Somerset duopoly of LibDems and Conservatives. Only in Bridgwater is it seen as a close race where the Conservative Sir Ashley Fox is expected to just hold off Labour. Of course Labour would help their cause a lot if they actually got of their backsides and chose a candidate.
Elsewhere Ian Liddell Grainger is predicted to have made a wise choice in moving to the Tiverton and Minehead constituency (the western end of the old Bridgwater and West Somerset beat). The polls suggest 35% of the vote for him with Labour and LibDems neck and neck at 22% each.
Meanwhile the LibDems have finally announced their candidate to challenge him. It is to be Rachel Gilmour and she clearly hadn’t read the polls showing her support neck and neck with Labour. At least if she had, her claim that "This contest is a two-horse race between me and the Conservative candidate. Labour can't win here.” would look curiously at odds with her observation: “I am not taking anything for granted.”
There’ll be much excitement in both Yeovil and Taunton after the polls suggested they would be won by the LibDems. Not only that, but that the Conservatives were a long way back in second. Gideon Amos may perhaps be considered lucky to be given a third tilt at Taunton (now known as “& Wellington”) but the prediction that he’ll win as much as 44% of the vote against Rebecca Pow’s 29% is perhaps a surprise.
much excitement in both Yeovil and Taunton
Mr Amos is trying to keep his feet on the ground. Responding to the poll he said: “It's up to voters to decide, but I'm encouraged it shows that hard work from the Lib Dem team could deliver the change we all so desperately need. But this is just one poll and the Conservatives are amassing millions to spend on social media and paid support in the campaign to come - so come and join us and support my team in this key swing seat!”
Pow has been widely ridiculed for her performance at DEFRA and over the weakness of her plans for improving water quality. Even so it is always a headline if a minister loses a seat and no doubt local Conservatives will be fighting hard to bridge the gap.
The polls also give Adam Dance, the LibDem candidate for Yeovil a real shot in the arm too. With a vote share of 38% predicted for him against 30% for Conservative Marcus Fysh, this is a wider margin than many would have predicted even 2 months ago. Perhaps this will see Mr Fysh making a few more appearances in his constituency?
Newly elected MP Sarah Dyke had to make a decision after her current constituency of Somerton & Frome was broken up. To represent Frome and East Somerset of Glastonbury and Somerton?
Her decision to go for Glastonbury and Somerton was certainly not the easy option. She will once again take on Faye Purbrick, the candidate she defeated last summer to win Somerton & Frome.
The polls suggest this will be a very right race but that Sarah Dyke will squeak home with 34% to Faye Purbrick’s 33%.
One government minister who might be safe, but not very, is Armed Forces Minister James Heappey. Although former MP Tessa Munt will be fighting hard to unseat him (it will be her third attempt since losing the seat in 2015) she still has some way to go. The polling suggested 35% for Mr Heappey and 30% for Tessa Munt.
That leaves the new seat of Frome & East Somerset. There are only two declared candidates so far, Martin Dimery for the Green Party and Lucy Trimnell for the Conservatives. Yet neither are predicted to win. Instead YouGov are calling it for the LibDems despite the fact they haven’t found a candidate yet.
Somerset Confidential® understands that a decision should come in the next two weeks and that former Libdem candidate for Somerton & Frome, Adam Boyden is making the running.
All in all it was an interesting YouGov poll. A firing of the starting pistol on a year of campaigning.
More houses less food
This week saw another planning application passed. And more farmland consumed. 90 homes have been approved on 2.5 hectares of agricultural land near Bridgwater. And as if that wasn’t enough, Persimmon Homes have announced plans to bring forward plans for 1,400 homes on grade 3 agricultural land at Woolavington.
When we approached Persimmon and asked how much land the site would consume they declined to answer our question. But with the planned houses, a primary school and landscaping we’d guess at least 75 hectares would be needed.
The point we have made repeatedly and unapologetically, is that this is costing the country in lost food production. And that no one - not the councils, not DEFRA nor the Government as a whole, is actually keeping tabs on the problem.
This week we have seen missiles aimed at ships in the Red Sea, exchanges of fire between Iran and Pakistan and more unrest between Somaliland and Somalia. The more dangerous and unreliable trade routes become, the more important it is to grow our own food, and grow more of it.
So what would losing 77.5 hectares of agricultural land actually mean (remember this is just two developments out of hundreds every year in Somerset alone). It is easy to talk about these things in abstract, so lets look at some items of food instead.
We’ll start with vegetable oil from oil seed rape. Assuming a normal yield of 4 tonnes of oil per hectare and 450 litres of high grade oil per tonne - we’ve just lost the capacity to produce 139,500 litres of vegetable oil.
Every year.
Or what if the land was planted with wheat? A hectare of land grows enough wheat to make approximately 3,330 loaves of bread. Which means these two developments would cost us the capacity to make 637,445 loaves of bread every year.
Or how about pasta? You get 1,550 bags of pasta (with 500gms per bag) to every tonne of Durum Wheat you harvest. That works out as a loss of 325,460 bags of pasta every year
a loss of 325,460 bags of pasta every year
If that is what we may be losing form just two sites in li’l’ ol’ Somerset, think what we are losing in food production across the country. And once agricultural land is replaced with housing, it is unlikely to ever go back to growing crops again.
Someone in government should be thinking about this. All the evidence suggests they are not.
Prescription charges by the back door?
The lack of pharmacies and the inability to source supplies of medicine have certainly been in the news a lot in the New Year. However at the start of this year we picked up a very different story on the same theme.
It all starts with a patient at Langport Surgery who had an eye infection.
As we all know, various qualified professionals (pharmacists included) are being enlisted to ease the strain on GPs so everyone can get seen more quickly.
In this instance the patient was given a telephone consultation and referred to an optician in Street. She was seen for half an hour and was encouraged to purchase eye drops to clean the eye for £14.
The patient made the point that being retired, if they had, as in the past, been referred to Yeovil or Taunton eye department for consultant care, then any prescription treatment or medication would have been free.
For the patient it felt like she was being charged unfairly. We asked Somerset NHS the body in charge of policy in Somerset for a comment.
They gave us a really long statement that in summary goes like this: “NHS Somerset commissions an Acute Community Eyecare Service (ACES). This innovative service is designed to provide swift and accessible eyecare for our residents via highly trained community optometrists in the County as part of our wider primary care offer. We encourage residents to take advantage of these enhanced eyecare services, promoting a proactive approach to eye health.
Reduced Over-the-Counter Prescriptions: In line with the government's policy to reduce over-the-counter prescriptions for minor, short-term health conditions, ACES empowers patients to purchase non-prescription products under the guidance of highly trained healthcare professionals. Patients encountering affordability challenges for recommended treatments are encouraged to discuss alternatives with healthcare professionals for a more cost-effective solution.
It is all very well claiming “ACES empowers patients to purchase non-prescription products.” Empowering is one thing but patients “encountering affordability challenges” should not be put in the embarrassing position of having to “discuss alternatives with healthcare professionals”. Perhaps NHS Somerset could consult their own mental healthcare professionals on the difference between giving all patients over the age of 60 a free prescription without question or ritually humiliating the less well off in order to get a free prescription.
To our eyes this is an embarrassingly poorly thought through approach to healthcare, especially for older citizens.
Developers off the hook again?
This week it was reported by the BBC that developer Stonewater had managed to reduce its contribution to local services by £480,000. We were already looking at the case but from a very different angle.
The money was to be given to the community via something called a s106 agreement. It is meant to be a contribution by the developer towards the extra infrastructure needed to support new homes.
In this case, the development in question is at Mulberry Meadows in Castle Cary.
But what interested us was the process by which Stonewater were allowed to reduce their contribution. You might imagine that such a substantial loss to the community would require elected members to sign off on it. Not just council officials.
After all many of the facilities that have been lost, will now have to be provided by a cash strapped Somerset Council or completely lost. For instance the near £185k on sports fields and changing rooms. Or the contribution to the Westlands Entertainment Venue in Yeovil to say nothing of £26k for youth services.
Stonewater, like so many developers before them, claim that the numbers they relied on when they won planning permission were wrong. Now they say they are going to make much less money and therefore they should pay less to the community.
Where else can you be rewarded for producing incorrect figures? Apart from the Post Office of course.
However making less profit is recognised as a reason for reducing the contributions a developer makes to community infrastructure. National Planning Policy Framework rules guide local authorities through the process of assessing developer’s claims.
There is a requirement to accept that a reasonable profit level be accepted to ensure that any development is capable of being delivered. Which shows how commercially naïve government is. As long as it is net (as opposed to gross) profit, then any profit level down to break even is viable.
Still in public servant land life is sweeter. If you are a developer anyway. A 15% profit is at the bottom end of the profit range that national guidance considers appropriate.
So when a developer pleads poverty, the case goes to the District Valuer who is appointed by the local authority but is independent of them - if that isn’t actually an oxymoron.
So in our case, it appears the developer was let off a chunk of their section 106 money without elected members have a look in.
Somerset Council explain: “As an outcome from this independent advice the applicants were not “let off” the Section 106 contribution as this suggests the loss of all contributions, however it did acknowledge the need to reduce the scale of contributions sought. These were consulted upon with the relevant service providers to ensure that they understood the range of pressures that may preclude development actually coming forward. Given that the review process is one of a technical valuation nature and the parties whose original bids were reduced were aware of the reasons for this a decision was issued under delegated authority.”
In other words various council officials, a District Valuer appointed by the council all agreed on the numbers. But the fact remains the councillors elected to represent the interests of the community had no say in the process.
How will those elected councillors organise facilities that the community need? What can they do in the face of the fact that the fact the same number of new houses are being built but facilities to support them are not?
So how are things for the developer, Stonewater, going? How are they doing these days? Are profits hard to come by?
The latest figures the company released are for the half year to 30 September 2023. Turnover was up to £133m from £117m for the same period in 2022. True the operating surplus (profit) was down a bit but they still made £35.5m against £41m the year before and reported that they had £445m in the bank.
Turnover was up to £133m from £117m
But don’t take our word for it, this is what Anne Costain, Chief Financial Officer at Stonewater has to say: “These interim, unaudited results highlight our robust underlying performance, reflected in our improved key indicators on operating margin, sales margin and interest cover since the end of our previous financial year 2022-23. The recent affirmation of our A credit rating by Standard & Poor’s is positive news.”
Not exactly short of funds then. Perhaps if they have been able to escape giving the full amount of money to the community via the technicalities of a s106 agreement, they could be persuaded to make a donation from their cash pile to help the local community deal with the consequences of all that new housing?
That Bruton school consultation again
Before Christmas we wrote about the way in which King’s School Bruton were seeking to take over the assets of the now closed Bruton School for Girls. The idea being that the assets would in future be used for the benefit of the King’s School. You can read the background here.
Because they need Charity Commission approval to do this, the school held a public consultation and that was backed up with a well attended public meeting before Christmas. The consultation has now closed but what exactly did everyone say?
King’s School Bursar Louis Tuson told Somerset Confidential®: “The trustees will be reporting the findings of the consultation to the Charities Commission, including all of the responses received and the notes of the public meeting. It will then be up to the Charities Commission to decide on the next steps and determine any future scheme for the charity. The trustees will continue to engage with Pitcombe Parish Council and Bruton Town Council as they have throughout.”
Which rather sounds to us as if the findings of the consultation will not be made public. However as Bruton Town Council chaired the public meeting they will presumably be in a position to assess if the school’s account of that meeting is fair and reasonable.
Meantime local MP Sarah Dyke has also tried to get involved in the discussions. Her efforts do not appear to have been welcomed with open arms by the school though. She told Somerset Confidential®: “Sarah has taken a keen interest in the future of the former Bruton School for Girls and is committed to ensuring the best possible outcome for this strategically important site. She has held meetings with a range of stakeholders, including representatives of Pitcombe Parish Council, Bruton Town Council and Sunny Hill Old Girls' Association, in order to gather their views and to understand the issues fully. Sarah had a productive meeting last week with Ian Wilmshurst and Louis Tuson of King's Bruton, at which she offered to help facilitate a meeting between all interested parties. Although King's Bruton did not see the need for such a meeting, Sarah's offer stands. We await a response from the Charity Commission.”
It does at times look as if this is all being decided away from the public gaze. However the Charity Commission have taken a keen interest in the proposals by King’s School Bruton and have said they will take a long hard look at any public concerns raised.
Which is good because the public interest in this, especially in Bruton, is profound.
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The issue of food production / land use is a curious one. A lot of Somerset isn't particularly suitable for growing lots of nutrient-dense arable crops (hence the tendency for pasture), so the speculative suggestions (especially durum wheat, which isn't grown at any sort of scale in the UK) perhaps aren't quite the right comparisons to make.
But it still starts to make a point about what kind of food system we want. One that's based around localised monocultures protecting as much land for its use as possible for example, or perhaps a more mixed / selective one consisting of smaller farms producing nutrient-dense foods whether in the UK or on the continent
Regarding the 'Election', I predict that the current incumbents, where the pollsters suggest that they would lose, will make statements to the effect that polls are "notoriously inaccurate".
The 'predicted winners' will claim a moral victory.
After the election, no on cares about polls!
Had to chuckle though at the thought of a major developer making a voluntary contribution to the local authority, somewhere in mind the words "pigs" and "fly" spring to mind.