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Saturday 28 February 2015

"Government must do more to protect communities from unsustainable development"

The Parliamentary Communities and Local Government Committee produced a report on the NPPF:
Futures Forum: The NPPF Report: "”Councils must do more to protect their communities against the threat of undesirable development by moving quickly to get an adopted Local Plan in place."

The chair of the committee has responded to the government's own reaction to the report:

Government must do more to protect communities from unsustainable development

27 February 2015
Clive Betts MP, Chair of the Communities and Local Government Committee, has today criticised the complacency of the Government’s response to the Committee’s report, Operation of the National Planning Policy Framework

Clive Betts MP said:

“I am very disappointed by the Government’s response to my Committee’s recent report on the Operation of the National Planning Policy Framework.
“My Committee produced a report on the draft NPPF in 2011, which the then Minister, Greg Clark, accepted almost in full. This is in stark contrast to the Government’s latest response which rejects the vast majority of our recommendations. Current Ministers have missed an opportunity to provide greater protection against unsustainable development in England and to ensure communities aren’t subject to unwanted housing development.
“Our report was firmly evidence-based and the culmination of a long, meticulous inquiry in which we heard from a wide range of witnesses, from parish councils to house builders, from wildlife groups to the property sector.
“We actually welcomed the NPPF as a step forward, but recommended some adjustments to ensure it addressed the growing number of concerns about unsustainable development. Sadly, the Government’s response shows it is burying its head in the sand about these important public concerns.
“Our report didn’t call for an overhaul of the NPPF but rather a series of changes aimed at ensuring it does the job it is intended to do. By refusing to countenance these changes, the Government risks damaging the good work that went into producing the NPPF and undermining the confidence of communities across the country in both the planning system and local decision making.” 

Government must do more to protect communities from unsustainable development - News from Parliament - UK Parliament
Parliamentary Communities and Local Government Select Committee slams unsustainable development | East Devon Watch
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Hustings in Sidmouth: General Election: Tues 28th April

This letter has just been sent out by the Chair of the Vision Group:

Dear Candidate
 
Many thanks for accepting the invitation (subject to any other emergent diary demands) to the Vision Group for Sidmouth (VGS) 2015 Hustings. So far the panel will be made up of the following Prospective Parliamentary Candidate (PPCs)s :-
 
Conservative              Hugo Swire
Independent               Claire Wright
Labour                        Steve Race
Liberal Democrat        Stuart Mole
UKIP                           Andrew Chapman
 
The Hustings for the General Election will be on Apr 28th at St Francis Hall
 
The event will be styled on the BBC Radio 4 programme “Any Questions”.
 
The PPCs will make up the panel to take questions from representative groups and members of the public.
 
The evening will commence at 7.30pm with refreshments.
The panel will gather at 7.50pm; the session will consist of pre-prepared questions being fielded through the chair to the PPCs from the audience - namely from those organisations and individuals who have sent in questions.
The panellists will not be aware of the exact wording of the questions beforehand; they will not be subject to follow-up questions from the audience, although the chair might chose to ask for clarification.
The question-and-answer session will end at 8.50pm with further refreshments.
The evening should finish at about 9.15pm.
 
The event will be moderated by the Chair. Microphones will be available for both panellists and members of the audience fielding questions. Refreshments will be provided by the VGS.
 
I will provide a further update nearer the time.

Best regards,
 
Dave Bramley
Chair

Vision Group for Sidmouth
www.visionforsidmouth.org

Vision Group for Sidmouth - Home
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Knowle relocation project: "How buildings sit in their landscape"

The Building Design website recently put the obvious point that buildings are placed in a context:
How buildings sit in their landscape | Opinion | Building Design

The Building Centre in London has just put on an exhibition in London:

Rethinking the Urban Landscape argues the case to commit investment to 'green infrastructure' in the early stages of city and regeneration planning. Curated by The Building Centre and the Landscape Institute, the exhibition sets out to show that with long-term landscape planning cities can become healthier, safer and happier places to be - from reduced risk of flooding, to countering the ‘invisible killer’ of bad air quality, to weaving more enjoyable and inspiring environments throughout the urban fabric.

Six ways city landscapes can be more flood resilient - in pictures | Cities | The Guardian

An important influence on landscape design has been Japanese notions of art:
Wabi-sabi - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Japanese garden design might seem a million miles away from Sidmouth, but an observer has sent in this comment:

"Orientalism became popular in the 1860s onward which accounts for the increased exoticism of many gardens. The verandah arrangement connecting the interior with the lawns could be described as oriental. 


Savills UK | The Knowle | Development | To Buy

"In Japan the engawa links the inside and outside, and this inbetween space is known as ma. Another key Japanese garden elements is “Shakkei” which is borrowed landscape, ie view to the sea through the trees as if an extension of the park. 


East Devon Council headquarters go on sale | Western Morning News

"Finally we have the Gingkyo Tree which is an ancient Japanese symbol which is said to have survived the Hiroshima H bomb!


Vision Group for Sidmouth - A new plaque for the historic ginkgo in the Knowle park

So, how does the Knowle in Sidmouth sit in its landscape?

Kowle Aerial

Futures Forum: Knowle relocation project: "The great garden grab"

A substantial area of the original parkland remains, containing some magnificent trees particular specimens of cedar, Wellingtonia and Monterey pine. These mature trees are covered by a TPO made in 1956 by Sidmouth Urban District Council, which gives protection to the most important trees on the site. 
The parkland of The Knowle forms part of the attractive approach to Sidmouth, providing an important contribution to the overall historic character and landscape of the town. In this respect the development proposed would have a significant detrimental effect upon the setting of the conservation area and views into and out of it.

Futures Forum: Knowle: Victorian grounds: Devon Gardens Trust

The following references are from the notes which accompanied the original application to English Heritage to list Knowle:

Knowle is cited in several sources as one of the most significant sites in Sidmouth, with a notable history:

> The renowned Devon historian W G Hoskins (of ‘The Making of the English Landscape’) gives pre-eminence to Knowle as the first cottage ornée in Sidmouth in his ‘History of Devon.’

> The site features a long history, very much associated with the character of Sidmouth: ‘Knowle has long been one of the best loved sites in Sidmouth. Commanding a beautiful view of the sea, the site off Station Road was originally named Marine Villa...’ 

> The private house was to become a fine hotel, with the Mates Illustrated Sidmouth from 1902 praising Knowle’s special location: ‘This lovely and luxurious hotel was not always what it is to-day, though, broadly speaking, the beauties of the surroundings have not, even were is possible, been improved upon. It occupies one of the most Charming sites in the county, and commands extensive views of woodland and rustic scenery upon the one hand, and ravishing glimpses of the sea on the other, which it would be difficult to equal, much less to surpass in our quarter of the globe.’ 

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Knowle has contributed significantly to the townscape of Sidmouth:

> It enjoys an impressive relationship of building to setting; apart from the replacement of some of the rearward buildings, the layout of the building and grounds of Knowle Hotel has not changed significantly:

> Maps from 1889 and 1934 confirm the way in which the character of the mature parkland has endured. 

> Aerial photography from the 1920s/30s and today indicate that the layout of the grounds and the density of trees have changed remarkably little.

> Similarly, close-up photography from the 1930s and today show that the gardens have remained largely intact, enjoying a continuity of design and appearance – with the original layout and planting of the 1840s gardens, as well as against the impressive façade of the original 1880s/90s Hotel building. 

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The Knowle grounds are immediately adjacent to the East Devon Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty:

> In its heyday, visitors arriving from the railway along Station Road would have been impressed by the ‘green approach’ to Knowle: ‘The drive to and from the Station to the Hotel is most charming, being through an avenue of pink and white chestnut trees, planted alternately, and everywhere shrubs are to be seen growing with that luxuriance which is so typical of the Sidmouth climate.’  Today this same route winds past the Manor Park which lies in the AONB; it seems, then, that the landscape down to the Knowle parkland and beyond has changed very little for over a century. 

> However, proposals to build in the Knowle car parks in the lower part of the grounds, which are visible from the main road approach, threaten this historic vista. 

> Current maps indicate the close proximity of Knowle to the East Devon AONB. , as does aerial photography. EDDC’s own regulatory framework requires that proximity to AONB be taken into account: ‘The policy stipulates that development will only be permitted within or adjacent to the East Devon AONB where it conserves or enhances the landscape character of the area, respects traditional local built forms and complies with policies on development in the countryside.’ 

> The mature trees of the former Manor Park, across the leafy Broadway road which divides the Park from Knowle to the north, are protected under the same TPO order of 1956 which nominally protects the mature trees of Knowle; today, the trees of Manor Park lie within the AONB and will be of a similar age to many specimens in the Knowle parkland. 

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Futures Forum: Knowle: Victorian hotel and grounds ... application to English Heritage for national listing
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Friday 27 February 2015

"In praise of wind turbines": man-made landscapes

Perhaps the most controversial renewable energy source is wind power, both generally:
Futures Forum: The aesthetics of development: power plants and windfarms
... and locally:
Futures Forum: A wind farm for the Jurassic Coast?
Futures Forum: A wind farm for the Jurassic Coast? latest news

Will Self has evoked the spirit of the landscape historian Oliver Rackham to support the notion that our landscape is a man-made construct:
Futures Forum: Oliver Rackham: How 'natural' is our landscape?



A Point of View: In praise of wind turbines

A wind farm
The countryside is often a man-made landscape, not a natural idyll, and wind turbines are just part of that tradition, writes Will Self.
When chanced upon unexpectedly the tips of their vast blades appear to pierce the horizon, as if these were the parts of a strange machine arranged seriatim and devised to sew the land to the sky.
Or else, looked at against the setting sun with long cloudy striate streaming behind their propellers, they can invert your entire perspective so that for a fleeting moment you imagine the Earth itself to be the envelope of an enormous airship, being powered through the sky.
Then again, when I've seen them from the window of a car moving at speed and tried to judge their size in relation to some other feature, be it hilltop or church spire, the parallax view will make of them an elegant herd of white-limbed alien creatures bounding over the terrain.

Find out more

Will Self
  • A Point of View is on Fridays on Radio 4 at 20:50 BST and repeated Sundays, 08:50 BST
  • Will Self is a novelist and journalist
Curious they may be, the wind turbines, and to those of us who remember the landscape before their erection they may always seem a little outlandish. But no-one could reasonably claim they are objectively ugly, any more than they could say the vista of coal-fired power stations that clusters around the Humber estuary is ugly.
Indeed, viewed from across the flat striping of harvested wheat fields, the cooling towers of the Drax, the Eggborough and the Ferrybridge power stations resemble the fat-bellied trunks of baobab trees, their pale concrete bark dappled with the dark shadows cast by the steam clouds belching from their own mouths.
Even the nuclear power station Sizewell B, on the Suffolk coast - which I lived close to for a couple of years - has a strange if minatory loveliness, what with its dully-gleaming white dome, that like the compound eye of Moloch sits atop its iridescent blue plinth.
No, the power stations are not ugly and nor are the great pylons that stride away from them across Britain, their steely forms linked by crackling cables.
The pylons have an irrefutable majesty, and with their heads in the clouds and their feet in the grass, it's impossible not to anthropomorphise them. These giant humanoid figures are clearly the handiwork of smaller humanoid figures, yet this does not make them strangers to our countryside. On the contrary, this is what tells you that they belong here.
Land patterns
It was that arch-conservative GK Chesterton, inveighing against the rural purists of his own era, who said "the artificial is, if anything older than the natural", and that "in the middle of the wildest fields the most rustic child is, 10 to one, playing at steam engines".

Start Quote

The vista the wind turbine revolves within whether it be the fens of East Anglia or the bens of the Scots Highlands, is a man-made one”
He understood intuitively what the work of Oliver Rackham, that great historian of the British countryside, subsequently established factually - that the pattern of land use we see the length and breadth of these isles is as much a human artefact as Stephenson's Rocket.
Rackham estimated that by the time of the Roman invasion the primordial British woodland had been cleared almost to the extent we see today. What further depredation there has been occurred in the post-war period, when hedges were grubbed up and pesticides lain down in furtherance of the monocultures so beloved of agribusiness.
The vista the wind turbine revolves within, whether it be the fens of East Anglia or the bens of the Scots Highlands, is a man-made one. However, that doesn't in and of itself mean that it is unnatural, for we are by no means the only animal on this green Earth to adapt its environment. You might as well describe beavers' dams or termites' mounds as "unnatural".
Indeed, the very idea of wilderness is itself a perverse human invention. A massive category error imposed by the British colonists in North America on a landscape of dispersed woodland and glade that they assumed to be "natural", but which was in fact the result of centuries of concerted Native American management.
Discoveries down under
It was the same in Australia, where the British arrivistes declared the land to be "terra nullius" on the basis that no human hand had mixed its labour with it - and so ripe for their exploitation.
Coming from their own immemorial associations of field, coppiced woodland, dew pond and commons, the British were unable to see the contours of the careful footprint that the Aboriginals' firing of the bush to encourage crops had left, any more than they could appreciate the cultural richness and diversity of this 40,000-year-old oral culture, replete with magic and mysticism. And besides, the British weren't altogether minded to see the Aboriginals as human at all.
A woman walking in the countrysideMuch of the countryside has been moulded by man
But before you shake your head at the hopelessly bigoted attitudes of the remote past, it's worth considering that we have here today, in Surrey and Shropshire and Somerset, colonists of our own who are every bit as blinkered. Yes, blinkered because they cannot understand that the preservation of our countryside demands not a rose-tinted vision of it, but a steely determination to utilise it effectively.
It would seem to me that most of those who energetically campaign against the planting of wind farms in their bosky vales do so not out of a profound appreciation of the dew-jewelled web of life, but merely as spectators who wish the show that they've paid admission for to go as advertised. After all, hardly anyone really lives in the country any more and a mere fraction of the population work on the land.
For the rest, they look upon it from their terraces and their decking, they stroll a few hundred yards across it, and then they get in their off-road vehicles to drive on the road to the nearest town or city, where they sit in an office staring at a computer screen.
I once walked from my house in central London to Newhaven on the Sussex coast. It took me three days and apart from when I was traversing two areas that had been government-mandated as "areas of outstanding natural beauty" - the Ashdown Forest and the South Downs - I saw a mere handful of people in the countryside.
Dream or reality?
For hour upon hour I tramped in splendid isolation - and this in one of the most densely populated regions on Earth. It made me wonder what it is, precisely, that people feel moved to protect in our countryside. Is it its reality, the patchwork of chemically-drenched fields and pay-per-kill pheasant-stocked woodlands interspersed with crowded National Parks? Or is it a bucolic reverie the elements of which have come to them not through direct experience, but the media?
No to wind turbines notice on treeMany rural communities are opposed to wind farms
Now the government is intent on changing the planning guidelines so that effectively the presumption will be in favour of the developer. The need, they say, is for more housing and yet street upon street of terraces lie vacant and festering on the outskirts of some of our cities.
Surely, the truth of the matter is that the desire is for more green-field housing because only such habitations have the added-value that ex-urbanites seek and developers can charge for. The aim, it is said, is not only to provide housing but to stimulate growth. Growth, the zeitgeist buzzword that will, with an insistent chainsaw whine chop down and supplant that former favourite, sustainability.
Well, I daresay they will build their new dormitory communities and they will get their growth. The irony being that while the first colonists will doubtless be happy enough to enjoy their view, soon enough they will begin to complain about this or that intrusion into the wilderness. Before too long they will have grown into a community, united in opposition to the very changes that their own new estate was predicated upon.
Perhaps when the entire landmass has been so subdivided that there remains not a single portion that cannot be identified as someone or other's backyard, then, and only then, will the property owners be able to acknowledge after all that there's something really rather beautiful about a wind turbine.
Unfortunately, by then it will be too late because there won't be white blades whirring at the end of the garden, but black clouds belching from the chimneys necessary to power all that rural idiocy.

BBC News - A Point of View: In praise of wind turbines
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A wind farm for the Jurassic Coast? latest news

The plans for a wind farm off Dorset have been considered for some time now:
Futures Forum: A wind farm for the Jurassic Coast?
Navitus Bay wind farm information, See proposed offshore wind turbines - Home

The Jurassic Coast is a World Heritage site - which has provoked quite some opposition:
Culture Secretary joins battle against Navitus Bay offshore wind farm - 20 Feb 2015 - News from BusinessGreen
BBC News - Culture Secretary to review handling of Navitus Bay wind farm plan

Jurassic Coast windfarm plan at Unesco site ‘like bulldozing Buckingham Palace’, residents warn



MPs, locals and naturalists have banded together to fight plans by EDF Energy to build one of the world’s largest windfarms

Jurassic Coast windfarm plan at Unesco site ‘like bulldozing Buckingham Palace’, residents warn - Environment - The Independent

Now, issues around tourism have entered the fray:

“Irresponsible and shameless exploitation” – new tourism chief takes stand against Navitus Bay



Friday 27 February 2015 in News by Steven Smith, Chief Reporter

THE organisation representing tourism businesses based in Bournemouth has slammed the Navitus Bay wind farm – branding it an “irresponsible and shameless exploitation of a unique location”.

In a statement attacking the proposals, Bournemouth Tourism Management Board also said it was furious that EDF Energy, one of the backers of the Navitus Bay project, was “completely disregarding the environmental and consequential economic impact on the local area and refusing to compensate for the multi-million pound damage local businesses face”.



An offshore wind farm project near Bournemouth has been slammed by Bournemouth Tourist Management Board (BTMB) because it could lead to thousands of job losses in the area.

If built, the Navitus Bay Wind farm will generate enough renewable energy to power around 700,000 homes and could create a minimum of 1,700 jobs during the construction phase.

But BTMB said the five-year construction would see around 2,500 job losses in the area and have an impact on the tourism industry.

It condemned EDF Energy’s plan to build what the board claims is one of the world’s largest offshore wind farms in Poole Bay because it is an “exploitation” of the area and is ”irresponsible,” they said.

The Chairman of the board, Des Simmons said: “It is totally unacceptable that Navitus Bay’s consortium led by EDF Energy is refusing to acknowledge or meet its environmental and economic obligations.

“It wants to turn England’s beautiful, unspoilt Poole Bay into an industrial landscape and destroy Bournemouth’s vital tourism business to boot. The only reason for building the vast wind farm so close to shore is for EDF Energy and its Dutch partner Eneco to save money and profiteer.”

The development is a joint 50-50 venture between renewable energy company, Eneco Wind UK Ltd and EDF Energy. If gets approval it will be located roughly 22 kilometres from Bournemouth at its nearest point.

Mike Unsworth, Project Director for the Navitus Bay Project added: “Our shareholders, both EDF Energy and Eneco, have a long-track record of working with local communities on major energy projects and understand the concerns flagged in Bournemouth. That’s precisely why the project team has undertaken an unprecedented four rounds of public consultation and provided extensive and independent insight into both the potential impacts and benefits the wind park could bring.

“We have already offered the nine local councils a £15million fund that they can run to mitigate any minor tourism impacts that may occur. What’s more, we will continue to engage with the local business community based in Bournemouth, to ensure the local supply chain opportunities the wind park can offer are maximised.”

Oliver Rackham: How 'natural' is our landscape?

The respected landscape historian Oliver Rackham died earlier this month:
Professor Oliver Rackham, historical ecologist - obituary - Telegraph
Oliver Rackham obituary | Environment | The Guardian

This is Simon Jenkins' take on his legacy - looking at Rackham's 'language of landscape beauty':

I am sure the way forward is to treat the countryside as we do urban land. It should be listed and conserved for its scenic value — as it is for its quality as farmland. I would guess this would render sacrosanct a ‘grade one’ list of roughly three quarters of rural England, to be built on only in extremity. The remaining grades would enjoy the protection of a ‘presumption against development’, but a protection that would dwindle down the grades to ‘of limited local value’.

One feature of such listing is that green belts could be redefined. Those of minimal amenity value would be released in favour of belt extension elsewhere. It is stupid to guard a muddy suburban field while building over the flanks of the Pennines.

In making these judgments we need to rediscover the language of landscape beauty, fashioned by the sadly deceased Oliver Rackham and others. Without such language, argument is debased and money rules. The policy of ‘let rip’, adopted by both major parties at present, means that England’s countryside is having to fight for each wood and field alone. At which point I say, praise be for nimbys.

The myth of the housing crisis » The Spectator
“The Myth of the Housing Crisis” – Sir Simon Jenkins (Chair, National Trust) | East Devon Watch

However, defining 'landscape' is a tricky business:

It is all too easy, though, to forget that landscapes are also partly social constructions, with many different meanings bound up in them.

In 'Remaking the Landscape', Jennifer Jenkins has brought together a dozen contributors in a single volume to reflect and speculate on the nature of the British landscape.

Important questions and contradictions are posed. Would we like more woodlands, or large fields with distant hedgerows? Would we like more houses facing grand views? Yes, if we live in them; no, if we want to walk nearby. Should there be more roads to ease our transport worries? How do we look after our communities on the margins of the economy? Above all, what are our collective attitudes to the land? Do we care enough, or are we content to see important environmental and cultural resources slip away through gradual degradation and damage?

Simon Jenkins' and Marion Shoard's concerns are with the urban landscapes and edgelands. Nature does not have to be grand for us to enjoy it. Indeed, with more and more people living in urban settings, it is nearby nature that is most accessible - the city park, community garden or allotments, urban heathland and patch of woodland all provide great value for local people. But how do we protect these? And what will we do about the sprawl of "commercial blocks of extraordinary ugliness" that surround many of our oldest towns, as Jenkins puts it?

Other essays provide useful perspectives on history (David Cannadine), on the probable effects of climate change (Crispin Tickell), on population pressures and changing household compositions (John Clarke), on the value of ancient woodlands (Oliver Rackham), and on the effects of sustainable development on our planning systems (David Bannister).

Despite the broad scope of the book, important questions remain. How will the population decline affect landscapes half a century from now?

As the book's editor puts it: "The one thing that is certain about British landscapes is that they will change, and change dramatically."


Shaping the land that has shaped us | Environmental science and Geology | Times Higher Education

That ever-provocative commentator Will Self evoked Rackham when questioning how 'natural' our landscape really is:

It was that arch-conservative GK Chesterton, inveighing against the rural purists of his own era, who said "the artificial is, if anything older than the natural", and that "in the middle of the wildest fields the most rustic child is, 10 to one, playing at steam engines".

He understood intuitively what the work of Oliver Rackham, that great historian of the British countryside, subsequently established factually - that the pattern of land use we see the length and breadth of these isles is as much a human artefact as Stephenson's Rocket.

Rackham estimated that by the time of the Roman invasion the primordial British woodland had been cleared almost to the extent we see today. What further depredation there has been occurred in the post-war period, when hedges were grubbed up and pesticides lain down in furtherance of the monocultures so beloved of agribusiness.

The vista the wind turbine revolves within, whether it be the fens of East Anglia or the bens of the Scots Highlands, is a man-made one. However, that doesn't in and of itself mean that it is unnatural, for we are by no means the only animal on this green Earth to adapt its environment. You might as well describe beavers' dams or termites' mounds as "unnatural".

Indeed, the very idea of wilderness is itself a perverse human invention. A massive category error imposed by the British colonists in North America on a landscape of dispersed woodland and glade that they assumed to be "natural", but which was in fact the result of centuries of concerted Native American management.

Thursday 26 February 2015

Sidmouth Beach Management Plan >>> "renewed call for evidence from Sidmouth people to provide details of their personal knowledge of the beach and cliffs"

The Sidmouth Beach Management steering group have asked for insights and information from the public about the changes at Pennington Point over the years, to help in putting together a plan for tackling the issues:
Futures Forum: Sidmouth Beach Management Plan: invitation to comment on draft reports: by 18th February
Futures Forum: "Although the cliff face at Pennington Point has experienced recent erosion, there is no immediate requirement for emergency works to be undertaken and that the town of Sidmouth is not at increased risk of flooding now or in the near future." [2009 Report]
Futures Forum: Sidmouth Beach Management Plan >>> Pennington Point "was once protected by shingle, but the 1995 sea defences led to the eastern beach being washed out - exposing Pennington Point and putting the eastern town at risk."

The Steering Group met earlier this week.

Here is the report from the Vision Group's representative on the BMP steering group:

Beach Management Plan update

The beach management consultants have prepared draft reports on the current situation in readiness for preparing a long list of options for beach management in the future.

The reports covered the environmental aspects of erosion, the costal processes producing erosion, the state of the current coastal defences and the economic facts about assets that are at risk.

The steering group members made numbers of very strong comments especially about the accuracy and effectiveness of measurements of erosion. The consultants were criticised for relying too much on snapshots of measurements from inadequate equipment and too few visits. They were also criticised for taking no account of the evidence of long-term Sidmothians who had personal experience of erosion and the effect of storms over the years.

There is now a renewed call for evidence from Sidmouth people to provide details of their personal knowledge of the beach and cliffs, especially around Pennington Point, the East beach, the fishermen's launching beach, Alma bridge and flooding across the Esplanade. However any information about aspects of the whole coast from the East beach to the West beach will be useful.

Do you have a story to tell, for example about the level of East beach compared with the Alma bridge steps, or of the distance from Alma bridge to high water mark on East Beach (the consultants currently claim the beach has not been moved back to the bridge by the erosion of the cliffs)? We need your best estimate of the date of your memory and estimates of distance and height. Perhaps you can relate it to the height of the railway tunnel or the western wall of the river Sid. Do you have photos?

if you can help, please send any information to me and to the deputy project leader
Tony Burch: tburch123@yahoo.co.uk.

If you want to post me something then my address is:
Flat 4 6 Fortfield Terrace, Sidmouth EX10 8NT

Jo frith
Vision Group for Sidmouth



And here is the press release from the District Council:

'Be our eyes and ears' - steering group needs locals to help provide vital evidence for beach management plan

26 February 2015

Positive and informed discussion at second meeting of Sidmouth & East Beach Management Plan steering group


Can local people remember how the beaches and cliffs looked in the past?

A diverse cross section of local community representatives, coastal engineers and environmental experts, together with East Devon District Council officers and councillors met yesterday at the council's offices, as part of the Steering Group for the Sidmouth & East Beach Management Plan (BMP) project, to hear coastal management experts CH2M Hill Halcrow's presentation of the four baseline reports (Coastal Process, Coastal Defence Works, Environmental Issues and the Economics), which will form the foundation of a new BMP.

The highly detailed reports were the subject of much energetic and positive discussion by the steering group, which includes among its members experts from theEnvironment Agency and Natural England. The main emerging decision, agreed by all the group members, was that the reports needed more local evidence about the coastal processes to be incorporated to inform options for future action.

In view of the important nature of this additional information, the Steering Group agreed that extra time must be provided to give the public a chance to respond to the call for local material and to allow the project's consultants CH2M Hill Halcrow, sufficient space to analyse any new intelligence. The final baseline reports will be sent to the Steering Group members once the scientific data and local information sources are complete and integrated into the evidence base.

Councillor Andrew Moulding, the council's deputy leader and chairman of the Steering Group said:

We are at a stage in this project when we need the local people of Sidmouth to be our eyes and our ears. We have already received excellent anecdotal evidence from the local community and members of the steering group, but we need additional relevant information - the missing pieces in the jigsaw - which will help support the data we have already collected.

Local information is vital as it will help us to create more detailed timelines for critical issues, such as the rate of erosion, and will ultimately help us to agree the short, medium and long-term management of the beaches. This evidence will enable our consultants to finalise the baseline reports and then produce a range of options to help us move forward. The steering group will be meeting again in the early autumn to consider these options.

I am delighted at the positive spirit with which the steering group approached this meeting and I would like to thank everyone for their contribution to the discussions. There was a great deal of extremely complex data to consider and we are indebted to the amount of time which our local community representatives took to read the reports - they provided us with invaluable insight and local knowledge.
Steering Group's call-out for local information from the public

We need to assemble as much reliable evidence on historic erosion rates as possible. Our project team requires details about the form, nature and position of the coastline within half a mile of Sidmouth and the river Sid over previous decades, or even centuries, as long as the information can be quantified and is reliable.

For example, evidence with dates that can show or describe the coast and how the coast appeared in the past will be of immense benefit to the project. Useful material that we would like to see includes:
Photographs (including holiday snaps with the cliffs and beach in the background)
Postcards
Old letters
Newspaper articles
Books
Plans
Diaries
Reports
Historic maps
Paintings
Drawings
Any relevant old documents

In addition, if anyone has kept a record of the impacts of storms on the beaches/cliffs/coastal defences, then this would also be extremely useful.
Personal experience

Specifically, we are hoping that local people can come forward with their memories of:
Can you remember the esplanade without railings? You would have been able to walk straight off it and onto the beach, which was level with the esplanade.
Did you ever step straight from the training wall (beside the River Sid) on to the beach, which used to be level with the top of the wall?
Can you remember when the steps from Alma Bridge were level with the beach? Or, how many steps did you have to walk down to reach the beach? Did you ever note when the number of steps increased?
Distance from the beach to the steps at Alma Bridge? How far did you have to walk?
The beach is currently 10ft below the service entrance to the railway tunnel. Was there a time when you were able to walk straight off the beach and into the tunnel?
Back garden measurements for properties in Cliff Road. Have you kept a record of the decreasing length of your garden? Any information on the tunnel? Where and when was it exposed by the sea and collapsed?

Deadline for sending information and who to contact

Please could you email information/scans of photos/documents to: ALadbrook@eastdevon.gov.uk or send information by post to: Annette Ladbrook, Secretary to Environment, East Devon District Council, Station Road, Sidmouth, Devon EX10 8HL.

Please ensure that you send us copies of any precious original documents, as we cannot be held responsible for any lost documents. Alternatively, if you bring your documents/photos in to the main reception at the Knowle it should be possible to scan them, subject to prior arrangement with Annette Ladbrook. Tel: 01395 516551.

We need to receive information by: Tuesday 31 March 2015


26 February 2015 - 'Be our eyes and ears' - steering group needs locals to help provide vital evidence for beach management plan - East Devon District Council
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Otter Rotters: moving to a new site and winning an award

Over a year ago, the popular local composting and recycling service 
Otter Rotters Home Page

... was coming up against a few bureaucratic problems which were making life more difficult for them:
Futures Forum: Otter Rotters: Stop community composting being crippled by disproportionate government agency fees
Futures Forum: Otter Rotters: Please support them by signing their online petition. AND: Do you have any experience in planning applications?

But there's been some good news of late:

Otter Rotters celebrate composting ‘lifelife’

17:30 12 January 2015
The Otter Rotters recycling group are looking forward to move in to their new composting site at the former Woods Farm recycling centre. Ref mhh 4865-02-15AW. Picture: Alex Walton
The Otter Rotters recycling group are looking forward to move in to their new composting site at the former Woods Farm recycling centre. Ref mhh 4865-02-15AW. Picture: Alex Walton
Group secures planning permission for new composting site
Volunteers for a community enterprise are celebrating after winning a five-year battle to secure planning permission for a composting site at Bowd.
It has been a hard-fought battle for the Otter Rotters, who have had to overcome a number of hurdles – the biggest of which were ‘exorbitant’ fees brought in by the Government in 2011. Several other community composting groups were forced to close down, but director and volunteer Mandy Jennings said the Otter Rotters will continue to fight on.
And the team is now celebrating after attaining planning permission on the old Woods Farm recycling site for a composting site.
“This will partly re-instate our capacity and enable schools and other organisations to benefit from the compost produced,” Mandy said. “This is a lifeline for Otter Rotters, and it will have a number of benefits for the community and environment.”
The group established 15 years ago as a not-for-profit enterprise that provides support for learning disabled individuals and disadvantaged local people – offering them a gateway back into the workplace.
The new site will be a facility for composting the green waste collected from Sidmouth’s kerbside collections.
Mandy has also expressed her gratitude to district councillor Roger Giles for his help in identifying and securing the site, saying: “[He] has been a long-standing supporter of local service provision by Otter Rotters for many years.”
Otter Rotters provides green waste curbside collections across East Devon.

Otter Rotters celebrate composting ‘lifelife’ - News - Midweek Herald

Otter Rotters scoop awards

11:32 24 February 2015
Otter Rotter recycling collection operative, Rufus Duffin (centre) who won a recycling award, with his colleagues Jay Mallon, Paul Bastyan, Dean Mallon and Paul Darlow. Ref mhh 8110-08-15AW. Picture: Alex Walton
Otter Rotter recycling collection operative, Rufus Duffin (centre) who won a recycling award, with his colleagues Jay Mallon, Paul Bastyan, Dean Mallon and Paul Darlow. Ref mhh 8110-08-15AW. Picture: Alex Walton
Members of Otter Rotters’ eco-team have been hailed ‘recycling heroes’ after receiving recognition for working against the odds to protect Devon’s environment.
The not-for-profit enterprise has managed to maintain its sustainable waste disposal service, for Sidmouth, Ottery St Mary and surrounding areas, after its future was threatened by a change in legislation.
Rufus Duffin, a driver and loader for the Otter Rotters, was named the winner in the ‘collection crew’ category in Recycle Devon’s 2015 Awards, while Mandy Jennings and Diana Hekt were both commended for their hard work and dedication to sustainability.
Mandy, who co-ordinates the group’s work in waste disposal and community projects, was full of praise for her whole team. “Rufus is a superstar,” said Mandy. “He gives a really warm welcome to any volunteer, especially those who may be feeling a bit nervous.”
Rufus said he was thrilled to be nominated and never expected to win. “I’d like to extend my thanks and admiration to all who were present. I’m hoping 2015 will be a productive and inspiring year for everyone.”
Otter Rotters has been given permission to operate at Woods Farm, on Sidmouth’s outskirts, enabling the team to continue community composting - and stopping green waste being transported across the county.
Otter Rotters scoop awards - News - Sidmouth Herald
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