Richard Thurlow has today sent this e-mail to EDDC’s Chief Executive Officer, on behalf of Save Our Sidmouth and of the Sid Vale Association. It is reproduced here, with Mr Thurlow’s permission:
Dear Mr Williams,
Thank you for your letter.
In response to your comments about not understanding where the £0.5m came from that we quoted as being the cost of the abortive attempt to gain OPA, this is composed, (if you read our letter), of “Consultant’s costs plus Officer’s time”.
In the real world staff time is costed and taken into account in costing projects. Staff time on a project is costed at a multiplier, based on the costs of running the organisation. An approximation is about 2.5 times actual salary costs.
As you do not collect staff time sheets, (an omission in these days of public sector efficiency drives), we have made an estimate of EDDC staff input and costed it.Thus knowing that R Cohen and others spent significant time on the project, we estimate that the total costs to the public approximate to about £0.5m
If the project had not been pursued, then they presumably would have carried out more useful work elsewhere.
regards
Richard Thurlow
Chair SOS
Chair SVA Conservation and Planning Committee
EDDC’s full response to the SOS Open Letter is here: open letter council response 21032013
Save Our Sidmouth 