Sunday 14 September 2014

Not Open to Amendment

My questions to the new SWT manager, Nabil, were:

Dear Nabil

Could you please explain what will be covered in this one evening’s public engagement event on 18th September. Some have been heard to say that it’s a waste of time, that the significant decisions have all been taken and that it’s not honest to give people the impression that they have any real influence.
In 2006 there was a consultation that went over 7 months with three hour plus meetings. At the end of that we understood that a thorough review of management would happen after 5 years. A paper entitled ‘Management Planning 2011’ was distributed in 2011 giving a timetable for that review which would deal with the “vision, aims, objectives” plus other management elements. A series of consultation events was outlined which would span 5 months. That review was to ‘inform the Higher Level Scheme application’. None of that happened and the key Higher Level Scheme was agreed between SWT and NE with no input from the management plan review because that review did not happen.

Before committing to engage with this very much reduced process we need to know:

a) are certain things outside the scope of this public engagement because they have already been decided and are now fixed for ten years?
b) will Natural England representative(s) be present?
c) who will be present?
d) are all of the elements described in the Management Planning 2011 document to be discussed?
e) will this process continue over coming months?
f) what explanation is given for there being no RAG meetings since December 2012, a period during which the HLS agreement was concluded but not discussed by the RAG,  when the Chief Executive told Sheffield City Council Scrutiny Board that they were held every two months?

Best regards,

The full exchange can be read on this link:

 https://www.dropbox.com/s/4ba8avgqwkbgdur/Dear%20Nabil.doc?dl=0

The significant paragraph from the reply is below:


Not all of the management aims are open to amendment  because we are working towards a long-term vision carried forward from the previous Management Plan and which falls under the Sheffield Moors Masterplan, a framework that has been adopted by all partners working across the Sheffield Moors area following extensive public engagement.  

That needs some interpretation:
In current bureaucrat-speak "Not all" should be understood to say "Almost none".
Exactly what we have been saying in fact.  The few things that can be influenced are like crumbs thrown from the table.

This means that local people have no  power to influence the most important decisions which affect the character of the land and our experience when using it. The only way of doing this is by our setting our own stamp on the vision for Blacka. And that we will not be allowed to do.

As for the Sheffield Moors Partnership's (SMP) Masterplan no intelligent observer of the process by which that was devised could credit it with any meaningful public scrutiny. In fact the supposed  consultation was fraudulent. That word is used advisedly. Beyond being 'poor' or 'inadequate' or 'not good enough'. The word 'fraudulent' describes it exactly, because the process as designed by professionals in the industry, set out from the start to deceive the decision makers in the Town Hall. The managers knew what could be got past the largely ignorant cabinet members who would then approve their plans. They simply had to produce a glossy brochure complete with accounts and reports and photographs that inflated the validity of the p**spoor public meetings and the character of the consultation. Key decsions had been taken and huge grants secured long before the public were invited to express a view and even then were not encouraged dto ask serious questions. The master plan's main elements were well entrenched in advance of the meetings with the public -apparently a consultation but in fact a shameful process depending on no interchange of ideas and visions, simply an invitation to write things on post-it notes which could then be picked over by managers to choose those that supported plans they had already made.

And that same format is being followed again: the utterly disreputable post-it note consultation.



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