Wednesday 29 April 2015

An Open Letter to Councillor David Hughes

Dear Councillor Hughes

 You have very recently issued a statement to other members of Malvern Hills District Council in which you referred to the recent controversy over planning applications and the role of you and other District Councillors which included the following statement:

 “There has been an aggressive campaign against me by a few people in an attempt to undermine the democratic process of the Council on planning matters.”

 I have written this open letter to you to try and explain why the residents in your constituency have reacted in the way they have. And let us be clear, this is not an action by “a few people”. If you have achieved nothing else in your tenure in office, you have inadvertently brought about something of the ideals of “The Big Society” in that you have brought together a number of rural communities and galvanized the actions of a large number of usually quiet and tolerant people. It would be fair to say a high proportion of those stirred into action are conservative with both small and large C’s. Unfortunately, your actions have galvanised opinion against the behaviour of District Councillors many of whom do a wonderful job.

 To suggest that the actions have sought to undermine the democratic process could not be further from the truth. The actions have sought to ensure that the democratic process is properly carried out and is not corrupted. Our actions and frustrations arise from our belief that the internal processes of the Council have not been sufficient to get to the heart of the issues here.

 I have read with interest the Press Release that you have recently issued and the local press appear to have printed verbatim. In that you state that you consider that your name and reputation has been completely cleared by the fact that the Police are not taking their investigation into local residents’ complaints any further.

 Of course, one of the issues with a Police enquiry not proceeding is what to read into that. You have chosen to state that this completely exonerates your behaviour. As most people will be aware, things are actually a little more complicated than that as one has to factor in whether the Police force has the resource to do enough to build a case, take it to the CPS and make it stick. Deciding that they do not have enough to do that is not the same as a finding of complete innocence. We are shortly to meet with the Police to hear first hand their decision for not proceeding and to understand why they disagree with our Counsel’s advice.

 But actually, part of the reason for writing this letter to you is to explain why the residents of the Malvern Hills District expect and deserve a level of behaviour that is higher than merely avoiding breaking the law. There are three main aspects to this.

1    1.       District Councillors and personal planning applications

MHDC has several District Councillors who have applied (some successfully and yourself, so far, unsuccessfully) for multi house developments on land either they or their close associates own. Between yourself, Councillors Williams and Cousins the number of houses amounts to more than 150.
Of course, anyone is entitled to seek planning permission on their land if they want to. However, when that person is a District Councillor then the matter is far more complex. When controversial schemes are being put forward, and passed, in rural locations in part because there is not an agreement on the SWDP; and those same Councillors are involved, directly or indirectly in the planning strategy for the District, then you must surely see that an outsider might consider there to be a conflict of interest.

At this point, it is worth pointing out that it is actually not the point as to whether people have all acted in a totally independent and impartial manner. Conflicts of interest are all about perception and being seen to be completely independent as well as acting as such. One should not put oneself in a position for anyone to be able to question one’s impartiality.

The number of Councillors with major house gains is an issue. Three of you have had major schemes. I understand that there is another candidate standing in the forthcoming election with a major scheme within their close family. To an outsider, that seems like more than a co-incidence. I cannot think of any other group of 25 or so people in any walk of life who have so many house applications between them.

I said that anyone should be entitled to go for planning permission. If the three Councillors have the chance to go for that, good luck to them if the planning is appropriate for where they live. I am not against suitable development or people having a windfall.

Those applications should be fairly and independently judged and decided on accordingly. But remaining a Councillor is incompatible in such circumstances. The conflicts are too obvious and insurmountable. I actually don’t care whether they have been measured against an DPI, an ODI, granted a dispensation or any other mixture of letters the legislators want to come up with, there is a higher standard of knowing whether something is right, and this was wrong. If Councillors knew they were going for planning permission, they should not have stood for office in the first place. If the opportunity came up after getting into office, they should have resigned. That would have been the ethical thing to do. Such decisions take a bit of courage but isn’t that what is expected in public office?

I have come to the conclusion in this process that the rules as they are laid out must have been drawn up thinking of something much more modest that a multi house development. They would cope with a DC building an extension or a new garage but they are wholly inadequate for what has happened in MHDC. If a Councillor could benefit from a 23, 50 or 100 house development, the financial rewards are eye watering. Taking part in any planning strategy will always have a personal edge to it. Therefore Councillors needed to act to a true ethical standard above the rules and they have failed to do that.

2. Clay Green Farm

I do not know whether you had thought that going for planning permission on your land was a possibility when you stood for office in the Alfrick and Lulsley Ward. You have put great stall in your comments on the democratic process but that process needs to be open and honest. If you were thinking of doing your development, whilst standing to represent the concerns of your residents, you should have told them so they could vote accordingly. (Actually, if you did think that I don’t think you should have stood anyway).

I notice that you have not said in your current election campaign whether you plan to go for permission again on your site. So voters still do not know where you stand. Perhaps you could clarify that for everyone in your next Press Release.

There was virtually universal opposition to your plans within the villagers of Alfrick. In those circumstances, I simply do not understand how you think you could act as their representative. Nor indeed how you could stand again.

The perception of a lack of impartiality is highlighted by the Clay Green Farm process. Prior to you putting in your CGF application and this becoming public, there was an application for some houses at Chapel Meadow in Alfrick. The Parish Council sought your advice on that scheme which was unpopular in the village and they turned to you as someone with detailed knowledge of the planning process. Your advice was that it was futile fighting the scheme as it was bound to be approved on appeal and it was better to let it go through first time but with some conditions.

Chapel Meadow was approved on 5th February 2014. On 9th February 2014 (so four days later) you started verbal discussions with Parish Councillors for the first time that you were considering going for a development on CGF. This was not disclosed in the Chapel Meadow process.
In the CGF application, Chapel Meadow being passed was cited as precedent for development in Alfrick being sustainable.

Was the process and timing all co-incidence? Did you act in the best interests of your residents in Alfrick without any thought of any benefit to your own undisclosed scheme? I have no idea but surely you can see why this might arose suspicions to an outsider. The point about acting at a higher ethical level is to avoid this type of situation. Whether you did everything totally correctly or not, you should not have put yourself in that position of doubt.

3. Blue Shot Meadow

And so to Blue Shot Meadow which was the subject of our complaint to the Police. Your plans for CGF were promoted by Greenlight Developments Ltd. One assumes from the charge on the land registered by them that they entered into an option to buy your land which would usually be subject to exercise on the grant of satisfactory planning permission at a percentage of market value. Whilst you have no ownership interest in Greenlight, you are clearly in a business relationship with them. Effectively you are business partners in a joint venture, your shared objective of which is to obtain suitable planning permission and realise value from that.

The Blue Shot Meadow at Clifton, owned by a close associate of Councillor Williams (her partner), was also promoted by Greenlight Developments Ltd. That scheme if passed would benefit the family of one of your close political allies on the Council and a company with whom you have an ongoing business partnership. Given the number of District Councillors seeking planning permission, and the fact that they are all in the same party, let’s ignore the former issue (I think it stinks but I’m not sure anyone is going to do anything about it).

Your partnership with Greenlight was of significance in your ability to vote impartially on Blue Shot Meadow. At a very basic level, success at Blue Shot would put funds into Greenlight. It is a start up company with no track record or retained reserves. The company’s ability to pursue and fund an appeal on your own land would be directly impacted by Blue shot being passed and therefore giving the company a more valuable asset.

I have no idea whether the terms of your option (and the crucial percentage of market value on which the option price is based) are exactly the same as Blue Shot Meadow and the industry and Greenlight norm. If your deal is better, then why is that? The danger with such close business associations is that might be seen as a potential influence on your impartiality and be seen as a reward. I am not suggesting for one minute that this is the case, but that is not relevant, the point is perception, and the perception is that you are too close to Greenlight to be impartial. The public don’t know the details of your financial relationship but are asked to assume that it has not influenced you. I don’t know if MHDC have investigated this in detail but I would want to if I was carrying out that role.

You did not consider this to be a problem, and you voted on Blue Shot, where your vote was crucial to the scheme passing. You did not disclose any kind of interest and did not have a dispensation to vote as far as I am aware.

We have been told that you took legal advice on this point from the Council’s advisers. We have asked for the full details of that process. However, even if the advice was that you did not have a problem, you must surely see that decision to vote was flawed. On any level of the Seven Standards of Public Office, decency and common sense, you had an insurmountable conflict in voting for a scheme that benefitted your business partner and should not have taken place. You are experienced enough as a politician and businessman to recognise that (or should be). It will be interesting to see how detailed the advice was but if it did say there was not a problem then the Council has a serious problem with the quality of its advice and you were either naïve or sheltering behind some crass advice.

A number of residents from Clifton and Alfrick and Lulsley formally complained about the Blue Shot Meadow process to the Monitoring Officer at MHDC which was the correct procedure. His response was that there was no case to answer. It is not clear yet what sort of process he went through to reach that conclusion (albeit it that your Press Release states that the Chief Executive thoroughly investigated the matter as well as the Monitoring Officer) but that will become clear when recent Freedom of Information requests are fulfilled. I look forward to studying those papers.

In your press statements, you expressed disappointment that a small group appeared to be leading an aggressive campaign against you and implied that going to the Police was not justified. You seemed surprised by this action. Far from being a small group, a large number of residents from Clifton, Alfrick, Lulsley and Welland got together at this stage and started a fighting fund to obtain independent legal advice. Please bear in mind that some elderly residents of very modest means, incensed by this whole saga were contributing to this.

We were advised that if we were not satisfied with the decision of the Monitoring Officer, then our next step was to report this to the Police. Our experienced Counsel felt that you should not have taken part in the Blue Shot Meadow vote so we took that course of action.

Whilst it might have been a bit much to expect an apology from you, I hope that with hindsight you will see that your rather indignant reaction to what has happened is misplaced. You have pursued a series of actions which, whether or not they crossed the rather poorly drawn up rules of local councils, clearly put your impartiality into doubt. The complaints process at MHDC was distinctly underwhelming so you should have expected the possibility of this proceeding to the Police which was the correct course of action.

As residents we are desperately keen that MHDC can actually get its house in order and impose codes of behaviour that regain the trust of residents. We have seen no evidence that there is any appetite to do that. There seems to be a view that none of this is out of the ordinary and the fact that you have galvanised normally respectful villagers into a highly vocal force should give you a clue as to whether this is acceptable in the long term.

Throughout this process I have been deeply shocked by the level of party political partisanship in planning matters. I had naively thought Councillors would vote purely on an application’s merits. However, I have seen evidence of manipulating the political make up of planning committees and instructions being sent on how to vote.

I suspect you may have thought our campaign was led on political grounds and was anti Conservative. From a personal perspective that has certainly not been the case. I will continue to vote Conservative in the national election but you have changed my local voting. I was previously guilty of being a lazy local voter without finding out about local candidates. Having now seen local politics in action, I will be voting for people who I think really represent the interests of their residents irrespective of their party.

You may have seen that we launched a campaign asking Councillors to make a pledge which would have avoided all of these problems. We think this is no more that the average person on the Alfrick Omnibus would expect of their local councillor. So far we have commitments from the Independent, Green and Lib Dem candidates. I am not aware of you or any of your Conservative colleagues making the pledge which is a pity (even if it is 5 years too late for some of you). 

The Councillors' Pledge.

 
I hereby confirm that:


1. I will always put forward and support the views of the residents of the Ward I represent in preference to taking a party political line on contentious issues.

 
2. Neither I nor any of my family or close associates has any plans to seek planning permission for any multi house residential or commercial development on land we own.


3. If the situation in point 2 changes during my period of office, I will resign immediately as I recognise that voters will view this as a serious conflict of interest with my role as a Councillor.

I have no idea whether the electorate will use their democratic right on Thursday to really make a statement about all of this or will simply slip into inertia and put a cross in the boxes they always have. But whatever happens you will always be remembered as the man that brought together a widespread rural community in a common cause and caused Leigh Sinton Post Office to have to reorder Private Eye for the first time in their history.

If with hindsight you can see why ordinary people are so upset about this perhaps your next Press Release might be more humble and conciliatory rather than indignant and inaccurate (the Police complaint was about Blue Shot not Clay Green). If you do not, and if MHDC continues to sweep this under the carpet, then I despair for our political system and sense of decency.

 Yours sincerely
Ian Smith
Co-Chair
Alfrick and Lulsley Residents Group Ltd

Sunday 5 April 2015

The Councillors' Pledge - MHDC residents want to know who they are voting for

It is now a couple of months since villagers from Alfrick & Lulsley, supported by residents of Clifton, Upton and Welland, crammed into the planning committee meeting room at Malvern Hills District Council to listen to the outcome of the Clay Green Farm planning application.

The application by Greenlight Developments Ltd, to build 21 houses on the land owned by Council leader David Hughes, was rejected. That decision needed several remarkable things to happen. Some independent thinking Councillors stood up against the scheme and put forward some excellent arguments. That included some Councillors rebelling against the pressure put on them to vote on party political grounds.

The pressure and publicity brought about by the Residents' Group certainly seemed to pay off. Despite being rather patronisingly dismissed as well meaning trouble makers by MHDC's internal Counsel; and being accused by Greellight of carrying out unjustified smear campaigns, it would be difficult to say the glare of publicity we created did not have a significant impact.

Without that glare of publicity, and the challenge to prove independence by voting against the scheme, why else would the Chair of the meeting, hostile to the objections (and objectors) throughout the whole process suddenly have the first hand up supporting rejection? At that stage, of course, we would take any reason for rejection even if it was self motivated political ambition by someone who we believed (supported by learned Counsel's opinion) should not even have been chairing the meeting.

What was fascinating about the process was the completely unintentional outcome of Councillor Hughes' actions. Quote inadvertently he brought together the community. No, he did more than that, he brought together several communities. Whilst the ideas of the "Big Society" may have gone a bit quiet recently, the universal outrage at the behaviour of a handfew of Councillors, DH included, united not only the villagers of Alfrick and Lulsley, but also those of Clifton, Welland and Upton. I don't think anything in recent years has mobilised such a movement from normally quiet spoken rural residents. Not in his wildest dreams could Councillor Hughes have known he would be the reason for the circulation figures of Private Eye in a few quiet villages in Worcestershire to race up to the levels normally expected of The National Trust Magazine and The Shooting Times.

I want to be very clear on something at this point. Contrary to what some people have suggested in replies to our campaign, I am not against development per se and I am not against individuals benefitting from windfall planning gains on land they own. However, I am strongly against inappropriate development and firmly believe anyone seeking, or faced with, a windfall gain from planning simply should not be a district councillor, the two cannot sit together.

What probably came as a shock to the residents (it certainly did to me) was two particular aspects of this:

1. That the formal rules of conduct in local Government are not fit for purpose. To the average voter, the fact that District Councillors could remain in post whilst pursuing major planning schemes on land owned by themselves or their close associates, and vote on schemes backed by development companies which whom they have a business relationship, was wrong.

That some of those Councillors think there was nothing wrong with this, and MHDC seem to agree with them on this, just proves that the system is not fit for purpose. Relying on the technicalities of when a ODI is not a DPI, and is disclosable or not misses the point. Whatever the outcome of the current Police investigation, the voters think this was wrong. I suspect voters would have assumed a higher standard of moral decency amongst DCs. (And please have some sympathy for the Police in the current situation. Short staffed, they have allocated a commendable amount of time and resource to investigating what our Counsel has said are actions that have broken the law in respect of the voting on Blue Shot Meadow. A short staffed Police service must have a water tight case to send it to a similarly short staffed Crown Prosecution Service given they will not process anything for 12 months. If this case does not progress, please don't assume that means that there was no wrong doing here, just that it cannot be progressed. The Police have not yet reached any conclusions and recent comment in the Press is simply that, the Council Leader's personal comment or PR and not any comment from the Police).

2. I think voters would have assumed that their District Councillors would vote on planning applications purely on the individual merits of the scheme in question and in doing so would wholeheartedly represent the clear views of the residents who elected them. I don't think they realised how much influence party politics has on individual planning issues when the political make up of the committee becomes of crucial importance.

The reaction of the politicians (local and national), and MHDC was along the lines of "You voted us in so you chose us. Your control is at the ballot box." Of course, ultimately this is correct. Given the controversy which the Clay Green Farm plans caused in Alfrick, Councillor Hughes has certainly hung his colours to the mast by stating that he will be standing again for re-election. (Well, no one could accuse him of being over sensitive!).

I have probably been a "lazy" voter in terms of local elections and I wonder if the same is true of others. I have tended to vote according to my national political party leanings rather than really finding out something about those that are standing locally.

This needs to change if we are going to get local politicians who are prepared to operate at a standard of independence and behaviour that is much higher than the weak rules that currently govern them demand and thereby get closer to what voters would expect of them. We deserve to know a bit more about them beyond the obvious easy soundbites about fighting for more bus services, bin collections, play areas, broadband and so on.

The debacle of the last couple of years at MHDC, and the contempt in which the Council and its officers are held by a large proportion of residents, would have been avoided if Councillors had been asked to pledge just three simple key points, answered honestly, and if they had then abided by that pledge. The Residents' Groups are therefore going to ask anyone standing for a Councillor's seat on MHDC in the May 2015 elections to commit to this pledge - if they don't then we suggest residents challenge their local candidates as to why they will not sign up to it - and then vote accordingly. This has the support of the Residents' Groups of Alfrick and Lulsley, Clifton upon Teme, Upton upon Severn, Leigh Sinton, Welland and Powick. Candidates from the Independent Group, the Lib Dems and the Green Party have said they will sign up to the Pledge.

The Councillors' Pledge.

I hereby confirm that:

1. I will always put forward and support the views of the residents of the Ward I represent in preference to taking a party political line on contentious issues.

2. Neither I nor any of my family or close associates has any plans to seek planning permission for any multi house residential or commercial development on land we own.

3. If the situation in point 2 changes during my period of office, I will resign immediately as I recognise that voters will view this as a serious conflict of interest with my role as a Councillor.

It isn't that complicated. If someone wants to act as a District Councillor, and restore the trust in that role and in MHDC, why wouldn't they agree to this?