Waffle and Whoppers

Some more on the Sheffield Cabinet Meeting of 16^th September, the report on Burbage, Houndkirk and Hathersage Moors and Cabinet’s decision to fall in with the recommendations.

Warning!!  More may follow later.

This is a Report to Cabinet, therefore in the scheme of things within the City Council that’s pretty important and, being about the handing over of one of the biggest areas of land, if not the biggest, held by any local authority you expect it to get significant attention. It’s headed Report from the Executive Director Place. He must certainly have read and approved it, but the authors are two named officers, Head of Environment and Countryside and an officer responsible for Capital and Major Projects. I would expect the Executive Director to have endorsed this and also there must have been involvement of the Director of Culture and Environment (whose role includes being line manager to the Head of Environment and Countryside) before it was approved to go before Cabinet. Each have respectable salaries, £141,000 in one case and £89,000  in another; and of course they have PAs.

That leads me to say we should expect this report to be well written, coherent, clear, to the point, and reassuringly accurate with no loose ends.

It’s not.

This report suffers from poor presentation including textual inadequacies that can render parts of it meaningless. There’s also more than a smidgen of inconsequential flannel alongside the language of hype that pervades SCC conservation language; and some of the loose ends are significant. I don't regularly read Cabinet reports, but is it possible this can be typical?

We must plough on and it’s unlikely that any satisfactory answers will follow from the questions but they simply must be asked; so here goes:

In no particular order or priority, they could form part of a Freedom of Information request or questions to Council committees.

1 In order to be able to approve this have all members of the committee actually seen the full terms of this lease which is not appended to the report and remains confidential and unavailable to the public? A map is also referred to but not included. It would be helpful to learn the names of those who are entitled to know the full terms of the lease.

2 It appears that officers of the Council are to be responsible for holding the lessees to account in certain management details meaning that there is a likelihood  that things could be approved or not;  so what steps are being taken in the public interest to guarantee the complete independence between officers of the two organisations to ensure that valid concerns are not glossed over? Does the Council and Cabinet consider that a conflict of interest could arise if there’s a possibility that officers from the Council could in the near future be employed by the lessees?

3 There are no firm proposals for public engagement as yet, so we must assume these are not included in the lease (which we’re not permitted to see). We’re just told that the lessees are "required to make proposals".

Will the public be informed of these proposals before their acceptance? How will that be communicated? Will these proposals then be incorporated into the lease? And will we get a chance to comment before they are finally approved? More likely, will the proposals be an informal arrangement that is allowed to wither on the vine as the lease progresses and SCC's officers and elected members lose interest. (a big assumption that they ever had any)

4 Reference is made - in Section 1, Summary - to the ‘Masterplan’ of Sheffield Moors Partnership approved by Cabinet in 2013and its headline hype statement that its “innovative approach” will “deliver the vision of the SMP area as the UK’s leading model on how the uplands should be managed in the future”. Has there been any sign since 2013 that others involved in policy in the uplands across the UK have visiting the Sheffield Moors area, to help them copy what SMP is doing? From Scotland for example?

While we are considering this, how many meetings of Sheffield Moors Partnership have been held since 2013, if any?

5  Section 2 is headed “WHAT DOES THIS MEAN FOR SHEFFIELD PEOPLE” (absent question mark noted)

Under this heading precisely what do the following mean and did any councillor ask?

a) “The recruitment of  ……. a warden-focused on-site maintenance and management”  ? (copied exactly as it is in the report)

b) “real conservation benefit” (as opposed presumably to the unreal kind)   ?

c) “delivery of visitor experience” (did visitors previously not have experience?)

d) “the provision of a variety of stakeholder forums”  (how many and covering what? and do these get specified in the lease?)

6  Section 3 is headed “OUTCOME AND SUSTAINABILITY”

It is stated that “the proposed lease will ….. support the emerging outdoor economy strategy”

Has anyone been told that the Council is developing an 'emerging outdoor economy strategy'? Are elected members aware of this? Whose ‘outdoor economy strategy’ is it? and how much further does it have to go before we find out about it and it fully emerges? Is this disposal the only way it might be supported?

7 One significant whopper occurs in Section 5.5, bullet point 2

“The proposed leasing arrangements formed part of the wider consultation on the Eastern Moors Partnership in 2010, have been reported and discussed at the former South West Community Assembly..”

How does the author of this report reconcile this with what he said to me during the aforementioned consultation when he denied there was any known intention to dispose the moors?

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Really I wonder how anyone can give a report like this any sort of credibility. For some time I had thought it was just SWT (SRWT) who were beyond respect but the meaningless waffle used in this report - and to be honest - other nonsense I've had from the same source just defeats my efforts to describe it. 

UK's leading model ...... emerging outdoor economy strategy ...... sense of wilderness ...... robust framework of consultation .... long term sustainability ....... co-ordinated approach to visitor management ......

Who are these people lining the highways applauding the Emperor's clothes?

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Quote of the Day

"O, let me not be mad, not mad, sweet heaven!

I would not be mad.

Keep me in temper. I would not be mad." (Lear)