Question Sidestepped

The question was put at the South West Community Assembly and then at the first Moor Views Post It Note gathering at Totley:

What is the best estimate Sheffield Moors Partners can make of the income they will get from Agri Environment Grants and CAP subsidies and other public grants?

We were told that this information would be made public at the time of the publication of the draft Master Plan. No sign of it, though looking back at the report of the question in the Moors Views document, I now see that a figure has been given of £276,000.

What is best estimate of how much  money (will be) coming in via HLS, CAP etc.?

The total value of the annual payments that will be directly received by the organisations within the Sheffield Moors Partnership(excluding Natural England) in the 2012-13 financial year is £276,000. A range of other grants are also received directly by a number of the farming tenants within the Sheffield Moors.

This is for all partners and covers just the present year. It does not indicate what each partner gets but obviously includes SCC, PDNPA, RSPB, SWT, NT. It also does not include separate grants for certain works and does not give an indication of how the amounts will increase with the partnership's working together which was one of the main points of the question. There are special grants on top of increased HLS funding from DEFRA for landscape wide projects and also from HLF.

So we're not getting much of a picture and that, I'm sure is the intention. We after all are only the public and only those who pay the money that gets to keep these managers in their jobs. Why should we be told? None of the discussions behind this policy ever gets into the public domain. They go on all right. They carefully tell each other that they should only give out a minimum of information (and then only when they can't avoid it). It becomes obvious sometimes . Like the time that it gets into the minutes of a meeting that they should all remember the Freedom of Information legislation. And the careful judgement that certain things are 'only discussed informally' or on the telephone and then not recorded when previously they would be on paper or electronically saved on email. Managers thrive on secrecy. It's not 'good practice' of course but who are the enforcers?