Somerset this week: 28 June 2024
A final look at the contenders before you get to vote, the Reform UK candidate disengages, plus controversy around a new Chard café, raves in the fields and the junior doctors strike.
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Somerset this week: 28 June 2024
Runners and riders
This is our last news release for all our readers prior to the General Election. With that in mind we publish below all the candidates standing in the seven Somerset seats we cover in Somerset Confidential®.
We are not the sort of publication that tells readers how to vote. For each seat we have given our assessment of the current state of play based on our knowledge of the candidates and the latest polls. What we have offered you, is a view of how to vote tactically in each seat if (and only if) you are inclined to vote tactically.
If you want to see our predictions and pick us up on the ones we got wrong on 5 July you can read them here.
Bridgwater
Pele Barnes (Independent)
William Fagg (Reform UK)
Sir Ashley Fox (Conservative)
Charles Graham (Green Party)
Leigh Redman (Labour)
Claire Sully (Lib Dem)
Gregory Tanner (Workers Party)
This looks to us like it is turning into a straight race between Labour and Conservative. If you are a left of centre voter and want to vote tactically to stop the Conservatives winning, your best bet is likely to be Leigh Redman for Labour. If you are a right of centre voter and want to vote tactically to stop Labour winning or at least to modify their majority, then your best bet is Sir Ashley Fox.
Frome and East Somerset
Martin Dimery (Green Party)
Gavin Heathcote (Independent)
Shaun Hughes (Independent)
Robin Moss (Labour)
Anna Sabine (LibDem)
David Swain (Reform UK)
Lucy Trimnell (Conservative)
This is the one seat in our patch that looks very difficult to call. With five candidates from Green, Labour, LibDem, Reform UK and Conservative all looking as if they’ll poll above 10%, that would suggest anyone can win.
It is a seat where there’s little point in voting tactically, you might as well enjoy voting for your preferred party knowing they will have as good a chance of winning as the next guy/gal.
Glastonbury & Somerton
Tom Carter (Reform UK)
Jon Cousins (Green Party)
Sarah Dyke (LibDem)
Hal Hooberman (Labour)
Faye Purbrick (Conservative)
This looks to us like it is turning into a straight race between the LibDems and Conservatives. If you are a left of centre voter and want to vote tactically to stop the Conservatives winning, your best bet is likely to be Sarah Dyke for the LibDems. If you are a right of centre voter and want to vote tactically to stop Labour winning or at least to modify their majority, then your best bet is Faye Purbrick.
Taunton and Wellington
Gideon Amos (LibDem)
Charles Hansard (Reform UK)
Rebecca Pow (Conservative)
Rochelle Russell (Communist Party of Britain)
Ryan Trower (Green Party)
Brenda Weston (Labour)
One of just two seats where the sitting MP is standing for re-election. In this case Government Minister in DEFRA, Rebecca Pow.
This looks to us like it is turning into a straight race between the LibDems and Conservatives. If you are a left of centre voter and want to vote tactically to stop the Conservatives winning, your best bet is likely to be Gideon Amos for the LibDems. If you are a right of centre voter and want to vote tactically to stop Labour winning or at least to modify their majority, then your best bet is Rebecca Pow.
Tiverton and Minehead
Jonathan Barter (Labour)
Laura Buchanan (Green Party)
Rachel Gilmour (LibDem)
Fred Keen (Reform UK)
Ian Liddell-Grainger (Conservative)
Ian Liddell-Grainger’s old seat of Bridgwater & West Somerset having been split in two, he’s gone west and decided to stand in this newly created seat. To us it looks like a three-way race between Labour, LibDems and Conservatives. That’s a tricky one if you are a left of centre tactical voter. Probably best to vote with your party. For right of centre tactical voters your best bet to keep Labour at bay in this seat is to vote Conservative.
Wells and Mendip Hills
Craig Clarke (Independent)
Helen Hims (Reform UK)
Joe Joseph (Labour)
Abi McGuire (Independent)
Tessa Munt (LibDem)
Meg Powell-Chandler (Conservative)
Peter Welsh (Green Party)
This looks to us like, once again, the battle is turning into a straight race between the LibDems and Conservatives. If you are a left of centre voter and want to vote tactically to stop the Conservatives winning, your best bet is likely to be Tessa Munt for the LibDems. If you are a right of centre voter and want to vote tactically to stop Labour winning or at least to modify their majority, then your best bet is Meg Powell-Chandler.
Yeovil
Steve Ashton (Independent)
Laura Bailhache (Reform UK)
Adam Dance (LibDem)
Marcus Fysh (Conservative)
Rebecca Montacute (Labour)
Serena Wootton (Green Party)
The other seat where the sitting MP is standing for re-election, Marcus Fysh is seeking re-election after nine years as Yeovil’s man in Westminster. This too looks to us like it is turning into a straight race between the LibDems and Conservatives.
If you are a left of centre voter and want to vote tactically to stop the Conservatives winning, your best bet is likely to be Adam Dance for the LibDems. If you are a right of centre voter and want to vote tactically to stop Labour winning or at least to modify their majority, then your best bet is Marcus Fysh.
Rave on (please don’t)
This weekend Somerset gears up for the Glastonbury Festival. The mother of all music festivals, which is 54 years young this year is pulling the crowds like never before. Many festivals had their roots in something alternative, a bit counter culture and not always strictly legal.
These days it is very different. Festivals are massive commercial operations. Glastonbury attracts an audience the size of the city of Nottingham to fields in Somerset each year. They must be licensed. That means going to your local authority, round these parts that’s Somerset Council, to get the licence you need to hold the event. There will be a number of consultees invited to opine before a licence is granted. That will usually include the Police who will want to be reassured on crowd safety, traffic management and the degree of organisation required to control the movement of large numbers of people.
That’s the legal side of the trade.
Recently though the Police have made us aware of an uptick in illegal, unlicensed festivals, more commonly referred to as raves. At their height in the 1990s ‘rave culture’ proved a policing nightmare. With music festivals set up in disused buildings, often late at night and communicated to prospective audience members by flyers or text.
A Police spokesperson told Somerset Confidential®: “They are usually advertised by word of mouth or in niche circles on social media/WhatsApp and are often free/unticketed.” Inevitably social media has made communication of illicit events even easier. Most social media companies are unable or unwilling to scrutinise events advertised on their platforms so the message can go out unchallenged.
The rave concept remains pretty much unchanged, – excepting that in Somerset an illicit festival or rave can as easily be set up in a field as an abandoned building.
In the past week Police have shut down two would-be illicit festivals. In the first case the festival was due to be held in a ‘rural area’ outside Ilminster last Saturday 22 June. Police were alerted to the event after a member of the public spotted adverts for it on social media. A 24-year-old man from Ilminster was arrested on the Saturday morning on suspicion of conspiracy to intentionally or recklessly cause a public nuisance and sound equipment was also seized.
A 24-year-old man from Ilminster was arrested on the Saturday morning
The man has since been released on conditional police bail and the event did not take place.
However, Police were not so lucky with a second illicit event taking place near Wincanton the same day. Shortly before 11pm on Saturday, they received several reports of a music event which had started and had attracted a large audience.
Officers arrived at the event and then spent several hours engaging with festivalgoers trying to persuade them to leave. Hundreds of people had turned up with large numbers of vehicles parked on the surrounding roads. The last of the attendees finally left the area the following day.
A Police investigation is underway and anyone who has any information that might help their enquiries is asked to call 101 and quote the reference 5224162005.
With so many carefully organised and licensed music festivals all over the country these days, illicit raves have become less prevalent. But the Police are asking members of the public to help them identify illegal events so they can be shut down before they get going.
Acting Inspector Rose Green explains: “We don't want to stop people enjoying themselves, however we will take action when we believe there is a risk to the public or there is a significant impact on local residents. We will always try to proactively prevent events taking place but where they do, we will always prioritise public safety, particularly where we have large gatherings of people.”
Unreformed
Not everything we do goes to plan. It is an unpredictable world in which we serve and politicians are if anything, more unpredictable than most.
We have over the past few months covered aspects of policy and interviewed prospective candidates from most of the parties standing. Yes, we know it has been a long slog, but we try to give you a decent coverage of the election in our Somerset back yard.
Our last interview was intended to be with Helen Hims of Reform UK. Reform UK have the potential to be highly influential in this election campaign. Hence we wanted to interview one of their more experienced candidates and question some of the detail surrounding the party and its policies.
We chose Helen Hims. She is arguably the most senior of the candidates standing in the seven Somerset constituencies we cover with a long track record with Reform UK and UKIP, its predecessor.
She is arguably the most senior of the candidates standing in the seven Somerset constituencies
Helen has been active in politics first with UKIP and latterly Reform UK since 2012. She stood for UKIP in the 2015 election in the old constituency of Wells, coming a respectable third behind the Conservatives and LibDems.
Ms Hims was Wells Branch and Somerset County Chairman for UKIP and in the Brexit referendum acted as Somerset group leader for both Leave.EU and Vote Leave. Subsequently she took on the role of SW Regional Manager for The Brexit Party (later Reform UK) in 2019, playing her part in securing a UKIP victory in the European elections.
Born in Kent, she spent her early adult life in Sussex working for the NHS and the airline industry at Gatwick. She moved to Somerset in the mid-1990s and lives in the village of Shipham with her husband where she has brought up her family and runs a busy local business.
We contacted Helen and asked if she would be happy to answer questions we put to her. She readily agreed (in fact she said she would be delighted to answer our questions), but since receiving the questions, has declined to respond to us. In the circumstances we thought the best thing we could do, was share with you the questions she would not answer and the logic behind them.
You may or may not be aware that Reform UK is unusual in the way it is incorporated. Reform UK adopted the form of incorporation used by commercial enterprises with shareholders. According to Companies House, the company is majority owned by leader, Nigel Farage with 53% of the share capital. Richard Tice the former leader holds 33%.
With a majority shareholding, that would appear to leave Mr Farage in a position where he cannot be challenged by anyone else within the party, or in the event of disagreement within the party, removed.
We wanted to know why Reform UK had used this unusual structure and what (if any) consequences there might be for the party having done so?
Immigration is obviously a central plank of the Reform UK agenda. With that in mind we asked:
Curbing illegal immigration needs co-operation with other countries, notably France. How will you ensure co-operation with a country that UKIP in the past and Reform UK today, has been actively hostile towards?
Do you believe there should be legal routes for migration? If so what are they?
Do you believe Britain has a duty to provide safe haven for Afghan and Iraqi interpreters and their families who served with the British army in both countries?
Reform UK advocates that there will be no income tax to pay for anyone earning £20,000 or less. Stamp Duty is to be abolished on properties worth less than £750,000 and Inheritance Tax will be removed on all estates worth below £2m.
What will be the loss to the exchequer from carrying out those policies?
And how will they be funded?
Your policy to reform the NHS will surely be welcome. Especially the removal of waste and layers of unnecessary managers.
Could you explain where the waste in the NHS is in Somerset and tell us who are the unnecessary managers.
Can you give us examples of which grades and which managerial titles should be got rid of?
What would be the redundancy cost of this policy?
On net zero Reform UK seems to be keen to ditch many of the green levies introduced over the past two decades.
Can you tell us if Reform UK believe in manmade climate change?
Do you believe there is any need to reduce global temperatures by 2050?
Or is this something you consider to be spurious science and not to be taken seriously?
You say you will recruit 30,000 young people into the army.
Why do you believe that neither the Royal Navy nor the Royal Air Force need more recruits?
Although much of the manifesto is uncosted, there are some key elements which would raise funds. Notably a commitment to stop tax dodging.
Can you clarify how Reform UK is going to stop billions of tax being avoided, when much of it is the result of international agreements especially with the US? Do you have an estimate of the economic cost of taking unilateral action on tax against multinational companies?
Your former leader, Richard Tice, had shares in a family company Sunley Family Limited until 16 October 2020. Two of the largest shareholdings in that company were Shuttlecock Holdings Limited (registered in the British Virgin Isles) and Sunciera Holdings Corporation (registered in Panama). These territories are usually associated with tax planning which would appear to be the very thing Reform UK wish to stop? Would you comment on that please?
Many of the policies advocated by Reform UK will be popular. We think you deserve to know the answers to basic questions about the detail and how they can work in practice.
The full list of candidates for the seat of Wells & Mendip Hills is as follows:
Craig Clarke (Independent)
Helen Hims (Reform UK)
Joe Joseph (Labour)
Abi McGuire (Independent)
Tessa Munt (LibDem)
Meg Powell-Chandler (Conservative)
Peter Welsh (Green Party)
A load of waffle?
There’s nothing exceptional about a proposal for a new café. It is one of the few categories of venture that seems to sustain the modern high street. Popping up in between the rows of charity shops and empty former chain stores, cafés are good at being inventive and developing distinct personalities to enable them to survive.
But as ever when we are talking about Chard, not everything is straightforward. And we are talking about Chard.
The business plan for Chard CommuniTea Waffle is direct and to the point. Before being presented to Chard Town Council the business plan made no secret of the fact that it was looking to the Council to provide funding.
Indeed the business plan says: “We are seeking a blended finance model that includes £35,000 from SALC grants and £13,000 raised from Chard Town Council and the local community. This will help cover costs such as premises refurbishments, inventory equipment and initial staff costs.” The obvious thing missing from this statement, is any specific suggestion that the founders, directors and shareholders of the business will be investing themselves.
It is a fact that in the commercial world, no-one would put money into a project if the founders of the business were not themselves willing to invest a major portion of the funds. But here public money is being requested and, based on the business plan presentation, the public money does not appear to be match funded by the founders.
Nor is their any ambiguity about what the directors of Chard CommuniTea Waffle expect Chard Town Council to do. The business plan again states: “Chard Town Council will act as a partner and conduit for the grant monies coming from SALC and future funders. They will provide an annual grant for the first 3 years along with officer support for community engagement and report writing.”
Why so certain? A quick look at Companies House reveals that the founding shareholders of the business are four Chard Town Councillors and one former Chard Town Councillor: Jason Baker, Victoria Bates, Andy Kenton, Jenny Kenton and Claire Brown (the former councillor). All were appointed directors on the same day, 29 April 2024.
The certainty expressed in the business plan is curious. Four town councillors they may be, but Chard Town Council comprises 14 town councillors. How could four councillors be so sure that the town council would provide grant money before the whole town council had even discussed the matter?
At the point of writing the business plan, as far as Somerset Confidential® has been able to ascertain – and we spoke to the Proper Officer about this – Chard Town Council had made no such commitment. Indeed, the first occasion we can identify when Chard Town Council has minuted discussing the issue, was at the full town council meeting of 20 May 2024.
And to be precise, it was meant to be a discussion over making a grant of £2,900 to Chard CommuniTEA Waffle. But in the end the item was withdrawn. The minutes explain: “This item was deferred to another meeting.”
Let’s dwell on this a moment. Chard Town Council were indeed due to discuss a grant to Chard CommuniTEA Waffle on 20 May 2024. The agenda proposed a virement (transfer) of reserves to enable a grant of £2,900 to be made to the project. With the SALC grant of £35,000 that would mean that just £10,100 of the £48,000 initial funding required will come from elsewhere (perhaps from the four founders)?
At the 20 May meeting, Cllrs Kenton, Baker and Kenton declared a personal interest. However as far as we could tell, at the time they were the only directors of Chard CommuniTEA Waffle, given that the business had not at that point been established. So the directors must, surely, have had a prejudicial interest in the grant – effectively a grant to themselves – and left the room for the discussion and vote.
They didn’t. We checked with the Proper Officer who confirmed that none of the councillors had asked him for advice on what declaration of interest to make before the meeting.
However, they were challenged on this by other councillors. Which led to the agenda item being withdrawn.
The business plan also hints that the requirements of being a registered company and a charity is a disadvantage for the venture, and here we quote directly: “Chard CommuniTEA Waffle will be a Charity Incorporated company, this will be registered at Companies House and will act as a corporate body……The disadvantages of this will be that it has to be registered both at Companies House and the charity commission.” Our understanding of the main requirements of being a company and a charity, is that full disclosure and transparency over transactions are required.
Assuming the café does get off the ground, it will be competing with other local independent cafés, such as Eleos, A Bite to Eat and the Costa on Fore Street. No-one will shed any tears for Costa, a massive chain store operation which has pockets deep enough to look after itself.
But is it fair or reasonable for an independent café such as Eleos to compete with a rival that is funded largely from taxpayers’ money? Indeed should taxpayers’ money be used to promote what is essentially a private enterprise (the business plan suggests it will make a profit by the second year of operation).
should taxpayers’ money be used to promote what is essentially a private enterprise
Indeed the business plan explains how the new enterprise will take customers away from Eleos, Costa and A Bite to Eat. This is surely not what public money is for? If councillors, or anyone else for that matter, want to set up a new café they should be welcome to do so. Competition of the right sort is healthy. But it is not fair competition if from day one most of the funding is coming from the public purse with little money from the founders.
We contacted Cllr Jason Baker who is not only a director of Chard CommuniTEA Waffle, and a town councillor but also one of two Somerset Councillors for the town to ask him to confirm details about the new venture and its relationship with Chard Town Council. To date we have had no response from him.
Junior Doctors Strike
You’ll probably be aware that there is another Junior Doctors strike taking place as we write this. The strike is about pay and conditions and has been a long-running dispute between the Junior Doctors and the Conservative Government. The first strikes were called for January this year and a series of rolling strikes have been called since.
In the words of the British Medical Association (BMA) the purpose of the strike is to: “achieve full pay restoration to reverse the steep decline in pay faced by junior doctors since 2008/9”.
While we understand the point and purpose of the strikes in general, the point of this particular strike seems unusually questionable. Holding a strike during a General Election campaign is itself a politically charged act. However, it also seems perverse to go on strike at a point when the identity of the new government and hence the policies of that government, are still unknown.
It would be logical to strike against the new government once it has been formed, if its policies do not address the concerns of Junior Doctors. But to go on strike at a point when that is not known appears irrational. And, therefore, given the fact that any doctors strike must in and of itself increase the risk to patients, this appears to us to be perverse.
We did of course put these points to the body which represents Junior Doctors, the BMA, but they declined to respond to our questions.
In Somerset the following advice has been issued to patients and their families:
Appointments and services: If you have an appointment, please attend as planned. Please don’t call to check if your appointment is going ahead. If your appointment is affected by industrial action, we will contact you directly.
Maternity services: Running as usual.
Visiting patients: Please speak to your ward to arrange visits as usual.
Which service should I access? Regardless of any strike action taking place, it is really important that patients who need urgent medical care continue to come forward as normal, especially in emergency and life-threatening cases – when someone is seriously ill or injured, or their life is at risk.
Anyone with a non-urgent care need to first seek help from NHS 111, before attending hospital sites.
For more information on when to call 999 and when to go to A&E, you can also visit the NHS UK website.
If you have a life-threatening emergency, Somerset Emergency Departments are open 24 hours a day.
If you have a minor illness or minor injury – pharmacies and Urgent Treatment Centres or UTCs (formally minor injury units MIUs) are open.
GP practices will remain open during the Junior Doctors strike.
Self-care: Visit NHS 111 online for self-care advice for things like grazed knees, coughs and colds.
Pharmacy: Visit your local pharmacy for headaches, upset stomachs, aches and pains.
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Chard Town Council is one of those stories that just keeps on giving isn't it?
How long before someone applies for a grant to set up an independent council, I wonder?