Outside Public Control

Some further comments (rather belated) on the Action for Involvement event which discussed management of the Sheffield Moors and other upland areas in the country.

This was the debate that the Sheffield Moors Partner managers did not want and wished would not happen. They now hope the issues raised will be quickly forgotten.
Several times we tried to get these public servants to listen to legitimate concerns raised by the public who are their employers and their paymasters.

The main element in this is a failure to consider future management of this large area of land that went beyond the predictable and boring.They opted for something little changed from a status quo that sets in stone an artificial landscape pretty similar to that which game shooting elite prefers.

Now they are saying, when pushed,  that they like the idea of rewilding but not here. They say they actually like a less rigid landscape. It's just that they can't see that they can do it here.  This though is only when they have been made to confront the argument through the Action for Involvement event and a high-profile speaker. Suddenly they see the point. What does that say about them?

Up to then they had been making great claims for boring grouse moors as being somehow cherishesd and iconic and telling us that 'the people liked them.

They are there as custodians of public land spending public money sometimes by the shedful.  But as employed public servants they are stretching their remit and  serving their own interests and their own chosen agendas independently of the public. Does anyone seriously doubt that the key areas of their planning are decided between themselves and only presented in a way that will give them a chance to claim public approval? Does anyone seriously believe that they set about public consultation events with an open mind?It's really beyond questioning that they plan their public events to make sure that their preferred result will prevail. They  pick and choose those elements of the public they think they can get on board and who will back them up - tame selected consultees- and favour them with encouragement and attention invitations and their attentions, awarding them a status as favoured stakeholders. They don't want the wider public debate that is desperately needed with independent and younger people who have no preformed positions. Yet they know or should know that there is no absolute rightness in their preferred way forward on artificial landscapes on which the scenery and wildlife simply reflects what those managing want.

For month after month the management clique of the NGOs and officers in Natural England and Sheffield City Council have been cobbling together a set of documents that is intended to show that an exhaustive consultation has taken place about the area now known as Sheffield Moors. The narrative these papers tell is that everything has been above board and responsive to the public - a consultation that is the last word in public engagement and participation. Fraud..........

I would like to have a pound, even a euro, for each managerhour that has been spent on putting this documentation in order: then I might be able to afford that property in Mayfair and regular trips to Glyndebourne. Yet what is the truth behind this consultation? It's probably been hard and it's been exhaustive yes but the kind of hard tricky work we're talking about is done behind  desks working out ways of presenting their own ideas which serve managers interests in such a way that enough of the consulted members of the public will accept them.

All the time in the shadowy background are the landowning interests who get to the table at the board of Natural England and the use their own grouse moor ownership and public relatioans links to set the parameters the way they want. The local managers at RSPB and NT and SWT are small beer here and simply don't have the authority to go outside what their corporate top level bureaucracies decide is in the interests of their organisations.


When I blog here I am being transparent about my views and I give those in the conservation industry who I know read these words a chance to respond  to defend to criticise what I say . And it's all out in the open. If anyone disagrees I'm prepared to respond and have a discussion. The local conservation managers and the odd band of those who support them are not interested in discussion. They were pleaded with to have a proper consultation at which these matters could be aired. But despite spending over £50k on their phoney consultation - mainly devoted to cobbling together documents that made it look like they had consulted even when they had not - it was the Action for Involvement event that got them out of their bunkers, an event that was put together on a shoestring budget.