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Category Archives: EDDC


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‘Sustainable development’ at Sidford Fields?

FordsPA2

Councillor Stuart Hughes, currently side-lined by EDDC, has vociferously argued against development of a 12 acre business park on a Sidford floodplain in a designated  Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (See SOS post yesterday, and Booted Off , front page headline in Sidmouth Herald 17 May).  An SOS sleuth has also recently established that EDDC has erroneously described the site as  Flood zone 2, in its Local Plan documents. when in fact the Environment Agency rates much of it as Flood zone 3b (entirely unsuitable for building on). EAFloodmapSidford

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A proposal for the business park is illustrated here (from the Local Plan Representation Library, no. 1969 (Fords) at  http://www.eastdevon.gov.uk/lpreplibrary2.pdf. )
Oddly, no cars are shown on the diagrams, so we have added a photograph of vehicles navigating alongside the site, in July 2012. More to follow.

FordsPA1


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Stuart Hughes removed as Chair of the Overview and Scrutiny Committee

Councillor Stuart Hughes is understandably furious, after being told that he will no longer be O&S Chair (See Booted Off  front page headline in today’s Sidmouth Herald, 17 th May) ). 

The reason given by East Devon District Council for replacing him, is that he wears ‘two hats ‘, being both a County and and a District Councillor.

Leader Paul Diviani, and Councillor Andrew Moulding, are of course in the same position, so will presumably be  treated similarly. Should the  individual Devon County Council election results for these particular public servants be reflected in any decision on choice of East Devon Committee Chairs?

Stuart Hughes (Sidmouth) 1,923 votes

Andrew Moulding (Axminster) 1,800 votes (fewer than he had previously)

Paul Diviani (Honiton St Paul’s) 1,130 votes

Interested observers will no doubt be monitoring developments at next week’s Full Council Meeting (Weds 22nd May, 6.30pm at Knowle) . Details on our May 14th post

Please note:  SOS readers will remember that Cllrs Hughes and Diviani do not see eye to eye – here is a reminder from the SIN blog:

http://sidmouthindependentnews.wordpress.com/?s=Misleading+Leader&submit=Search


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Lack of Sidmouth representation on the key EDDC Committees.

Following on from the previous SOS post (Reshuffle , and many changes, planned by EDDC), here are further comments:

There will be no Sidmouth member in the Cabinet ( again ).
Only one Sidmouth member, Peter Sullivan, on the crucial Development Management Committee  ( again ).
No Chair or Portfolio Holder.
No job at all for Stuart Hughes! He appears to be the only member without a job on any Committee.
This follows on from having no-one on the Local Plan Panel.
No wonder Sidmouth lacks a voice at EDDC.
With seven councillors, Sidmouth is surely entitled to have 12% of these jobs.