More Awareness

More awareness was raised but not much transparency demonstrated at the SW CA meeting on Thursday. Sheffield Moors Partnership (I still can’t believe it exists or is even proposed) gave a brief presentation accompanied by two papers in the assembly’s bundle prepared by officers for the meeting. These contained recommendations that the assembly should “welcome and support the Sheffield moors Partnership and note the proposed approach to community engagement and consultation”. I doubt that the assembly’s councillors know what they were welcoming and supporting and to an extent neither do I. If ever there was a superfluous bit of bureaucracy this is it. The conservation industry in and around the Sheffield/Peak District area consists of a collection of bureaucracies all staffed by 9 to 5 Monday to Friday officers whose primary job is to ensure that everyone knows how important their job is. They specialise in paperwork and self promotional literature. Would we notice much difference if they weren’t there? We have Peak District National Park Authority, Sheffield City Council, RSPB, National Trust, Sheffield Wildlife Trust and we have Natural England a super-bureaucracy if there ever was one. Speaking as one sceptical of the motives of those who regularly attack the public sector and a believer in regulation and the need for a skilled bureaucracy this overweight organisational superfluity leaves me stupefied.

Now they want to stick onto the current situation another bureaucratic element, namely Sheffield Moors Partnership The motivation for this is dodgy to say the least. All is to do with what’s good for management and managers. When each of the separate outfits has its own management plans and priorities and the only unifying ‘big idea’ available that could deliver something really worthwhile is just the very one they are most set against then why is SMP needed? No alternative suggests itself beyond that put forward here on 18th October when I compared its role to that of the British Bankers Association. On the basis of observation of the workings of the industry one can assume its business will be to keep the public voice at a distance in matters of landscape management, helping to give the various organisations a quiet life protected from scrutiny and accountability.

But to reach that comfort zone they first have to negotiate their way through a consultation and present themselves as fit and proper to the decision makers in the council. Anyone with any evidence that council committees have ever exercised thorough and independent scrutiny is welcome to forward me details of examples. The consultation proposed looks a pretty fragmented and top down affair. The detailed wording which was waved through airily at the recent meeting is capable of interpretation. It can be read here: Bottom of the page, report No. 7.