Burbage Agri-Environment Scheme

The Sheffield Town Hall officers and cabinet members who are so horrified at the idea of public scrutiny have secured an agreement with Natural England via Kier Asset Management and the National Trust to manage Burbage Moor as farmland for ten years. This has of course been undertaken with no public discussion.

The details of this agreement were not supposed to be made public. After all it's only public land, so why should the public be informed about? - as for being involved in any kind of meaningful discussions before the decision ... well let's not be ridiculous!

The detailed papers sent to me following my Freedom of Information request can be found HERE.

There are important reasons why this information is being put online here. Natural England as a public body is expected to conform to requirements of transparency and accountability. Some of the time it performs this well. At others individual officers are not up to scratch on these principles. The same goes for Sheffield City Council. Doubtless they consider that there are other priorities and being answerable to the people who employ them doesn't come high on the list. N.E. has in fact devised a rather fine scheme for showing people online where the agri environment agreements are and who gets the money and how much. It's via a map that is called Magic. You can see it here. I've spent quite some time looking at it. Using it I've been able to see, for instance, the details of agreements with some private farmers in the Peak District. But when you home in on Burbage Moor you get the following message:

AG00429811

Scheme

Entry Level plus Higher Level Stewardship

Customer Name

Unavailable

Town

Unavailable

Start Date

01/06/2013

Total Cost of Agreement (£)

Unavailable

Amount Paid to Date (£)

Unavailable

Total Area Under Agreement (ha)

905.58

You may be forgiven for coming to the conclusion that the public don't matter very much. Why indeed should we know what's happening to our land?

For example Messrs Wilcockson in Hope Valley is receiving Entry Level plus Higher Level Stewardship to the value of over £124,000 and that can be seen online easily. That is a private business receiving public money. It's good that we can see what's happening. So why can't we have details of public land in the hands of managers and agencies working supposedly for us, immediately available? What can these officers have to hide? If anyone were to claim that Burbage is a new scheme then surely that makes it even more imperative that we know about it. Later on would be to make it 'water under the bridge' too late to make any worthwhile comment. The ink on any agreement is now well and truly dry. We should have known about this a long time before it happened. Our problem is that the people who are working for us paid with our money have absolutely no commitment to the basic democratic value of transparency: in terms of the democratic expectations in public administration they are still in the first half of the 20th century.

The Hills and The Docks

Lots of people working in docks have been told they will be losing their jobs. Meanwhile the hill farming industry which has been operating at a loss for many years goes on and on. Why? The answer has to have something to do with the friends the sheep farmers have in high places, predominantly large landowners including the remaining landed aristocrats and their cronies with grouse shooting interests.

Conservation Sickness

There seems to be something about conservation organisations that predisposes those employed by them to go in for a particularly shameless kind of grasping managerialism. Empire building is always a temptation for those who deal with land - they can never get enough of it and can't wait to be in control.

The recent two posts are illustrations of this:  Blacka Moor Agr-Environment Schemes
and Sheffield Cabinet etc.

But easily the most depressing news comes from Mark Fisher's latest article in which he analyses disturbing trends in Europe. What is Rewilding?

Blacka Moor Agri Environment Agreements

THIS LINK should give all the information garnered from a Freedom of Information (FoI) request asking for details of agricultural subsidy agreements signed by Sheffield Wildlife Trust (SWT) in March this year which sets their management inflexibly for the next 10 years.

It effectively thwarts any chance the public might have had to influence the course of decisions for that period despite all the mendacious and hypocritical statements by SWT crowing about their wonderful consultation. The FoI was sent to Natural England who are obliged to respond to FoI requests. SWT would simply not respond being a private organisation with no duty to be transparent or accountable. Which is only one reason why they should never be given responsibility for land or assets in public ownership.

As the National Trust and RSPB are no better this is also why the Council should not hand over Burbage to them.

Backdrop

Beech, Birch, Rowan and Bracken in combination 

Birch Supreme

It's fate, or just bad luck, to miss the few sunnier mornings. But how much worse  to be walking in the huge expanses of treeless moors nearby. Birch is a blessing.

Why anyone could be so foolish as to call it a weed (which I've heard said) is beyond understanding. Beside its beauty and its way of marking the seasonal changes it hosts a prodigious amount of wildlife and organisms from the microscopic to the largest native mammal. Most have now lost their leaves at the highest point but wherever there's a bit of shelter we find some autumn coloured birch to match the bracken and bring some consolation; we would not get that on the near Eastern Moors.

Rivals

Staying well apart and all quiet; neither was bellowing this morning.

The one on his own has more impressive antlers.