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Neighbourhood Development Plan - Kat (15th Mar 2017 - 15:18:07) What an utter shambles! It is a pretty lame excuse to be told by Chairman Jane Ives that the plan has been a flawed process from the start, and the mistakes are due to councillors being volunteers with varying amounts of experience and no one individual is at fault. Hello, we are in the real world here, not Dibley. That sort of statement makes me so cross. Sorry, but some of the councillors have been in the job for years and they must have experience in the local government processes that should have been followed. Somebody is responsible and they should be held to account, or perhaps the Council is so dysfunctional they cannot work that one out. The fact that this has been going on for two years without anybody noticing, shows a worrying level of incompetence. I thought they have an Executive Officer who has a remit to advise the council and councillors and to make sure the Council complies with all the rules and regulations. That does not seem to have happened, and it all needs investigating. Negligence is a word that springs to mind. Perhaps they were too busy fighting over who had control of the process, and wrestling for power, and it slipped their attention. And then we get to the money. They have already squirreled away £15,000 and have hiked up Council Tax to cover another £35,000 of costs. Two years downstream, there is nothing to show for it except a failed process and a lot of bickering. And to top it all, a Liaison Working Party has been set up which consists of Councillors who in my opinion, when you read the small print, will be able to manipulate and control the outcome to their entire satisfaction! An extra and unnecessary tier of bureaucracy that has no doubt been created to satisfy some personal egos and politics. Who suggested that one. Poor Councillor Garnett, despite her honest endeavours will probably be made the scapegoat, while others will duck behind the parapet. Or perhaps it was all fake news and we shouldn’t believe a word of it.

Re: Neighbourhood Development Plan - susan garnett (15th Mar 2017 - 20:12:13) Well it certainly seems that way to me. I was appointed by the Chairman of the council at my second parish council meeting. I was unanimously approved by the councillors present and more importantly by the professional officer who was present and taking minutes. Never once in the following thirteen months did either he or Cllr Ives raised any issue connected with the appointment of me or more importantly the volunteers selected by Cllr Croucher and I to work on the Steering group. We presented a budget which was accepted and adopted and is being approved again at the Finance and Policy sub committee this evening. We were asked to provide monthly reports to the PC we did so. We set up a web site and uploaded our minutes, Cllr Ives took them down,saying to us on March 6 th that she disagreed with our record of what had occurred in a meeting she did not attend and that one minute had a spelling error of a person's first name. However as we have been disbanded as a steering group if anyone wants to read the more notes of the work the steering group did during the fourteen months we worked on the NDP, please ask. The newly appointed parish council liaison steering group consisting of four parish councillors will now select all the steering group members and have published no selection criteria for either the new chairman or the members but no doubt at the Parish Meeting at the end of this month they will be able to explain them. One member of that group Cllr Jerrard does not even live within the Parish which seems to run counter to the terms of reference passed by the Parish Council at its last meeting.

Re: Neighbourhood Development Plan - PL (16th Mar 2017 - 08:02:12) Firstly I would like to say a huge Thank you to all our Parish Councillirs who without any pay give up hours and I mean HOURS of their personal free time in an effort to make this Parish a better place to live !! Secondly I would like to express my distress that one such Councillir finds it appropriate to publicly slate her colleagues !!! It is this behaviour that brings the Parish council such negative reputation !! It is impossible for everyone to agree on every issue ! That is why the Parish council is there in my eyes to discuss and gain a majority vote for the council !! Is that not Democracy??? And to slate the chair and it's members on a local website because they don't share your point of view is extremely disrespectful !!!! If the chair had identified that proper process had not been followed then sincere congratulations to her for sticking her head above the parapit to ensure our Parish Council adheres to legal & ethical guidance !!!

Re: Neighbourhood Development Plan - MJR (16th Mar 2017 - 08:57:00) I totally agree with PL. I understand that Councillor Garnett is a lawyer with special expertise in planning law. In these circumstances it would seem that she should have advised the other Parish Councillors on the correct procedures to progress with the Neighbourhood Plan when she was originally appointed. However all the work carried out to date is not lost as the new Steering Committee will be able to progress with all of the work carried out so far and produce a draft Neighbourhood Plan for public consultation. I understand that all members of the Steering Group have to declare any Conflict of Interest as an assurance that their proposals for incorporation into the Plan are not biased. I would add that I am not associated with the Parish Council, but have an overriding wish that this Plan is progressed asap to the benefit of our community.

Re: Neighbourhood Development Plan - CLH (16th Mar 2017 - 09:31:02) Wholeheartedly agree PL this is not the appropriate forum to raise their grievances/allegations. Looks to me that they are avoiding the proper processes or perhaps have exhausted them and are looking to retaliate and cause trouble. Personal agendas at play I suspect.

Re: Neighbourhood Development Plan - Ray (16th Mar 2017 - 10:28:02) Bearing in mind Cllr. Garnet was very new to the Council, she probably was not aware of the rules and regs concerning Councils. However Cllr.Croucher who has been on the Council since the year dot should have known and when the Steering Group was formed he should have made sure it was correct. He is on the Steering Group!

Re: Neighbourhood Development Plan - Kat (16th Mar 2017 - 10:45:41) Mrs Garnett, thank your most informative response. It appears that you have been very poorly served by your Chairman and the professional officer. It does beg the question as to who suggested and decided that the process was flawed and had to be re-invented almost overnight. A bit of a nasty smell about this, and why wasn’t it picked up earlier. Somebody is responsible. If the budget has already been decided, why were they deciding on it again last night. I look forward to reading all about it in the minutes of the meeting, especially as this process is going to be so open and transparent. I hope they decided to use some of the hundreds of thousands of pounds of our money the Council are sitting on, rather than increasing Council Tax. Sadly, the two words “open” and “transparent” have been bandied about by councillors for years, and some councillors said they would campaign for this during the elections. They continue to have many secret and behind closed door meetings, and that’s probably why you didn’t know what was going on. And of course, what a surprise, as Cllr Jerrard said at the last Council meeting and recorded in the minutes “Cllr Jerrard stated that the status of the group was an important factor. If the Steering Group is a working party, there is no requirement to allow the public to attend meetings”. So, how convenient that it is a Liaison Working Party and they can have secret meetings without the public there. That’s really open and transparent. I am also confused by the Terms of Reference of both the Steering Group and the Liaison Working Party. They both refer to a “Liaison Committee” and there doesn’t appear to be one. Clearly all done at the rush in bulldozer fashion. Not an auspicious start to a re-invented process which now has a flaw before it has actually started. Perhaps both Terms of Reference should be taken down from the Parish Council website immediately.

Re: Neighbourhood Development Plan - Susan Garnett (16th Mar 2017 - 12:01:58) A post suggests that Cllr Jerrard says it was my fault that at my second ever parish council meeting I should have realized that the appointment by the Parish Council of the chairman of a steering group needs to be voted on by the Parish Council. He is a professional parish councillor and was a solicitor before he retired. He sits on two parish councils, he lives in neither parish he sits in. He is chairman of the B & L Planning committee. Neither he, nor the chair of the parish council nor the professional officer tasked with providing advice and guidance who sat through that and nearly every subsequent meeting ever raised objection because there is no requirement for the chairman of a steering group to be voted upon. Had that been the situation surely the professional officer would have raised the issue in the year before my appointment in February 2016 when the then Chairman of the Council Cllr Croucher was trying to find a Chairman of the NDP steering group? He did not do so or suggest any protocol needed to be adopted by the PC because there was none laid down. He did not because there is nothing in the national roadmap on formation and conduct of an NDP making a vote an essential requirement. The steering group prepared a budget and submitted it to the PC, it was approved Minute 101/16 and adopted and the finance raised in the precept for 2017/8. This was entirely open and transparent. However on the issue of openness and transparency:- Neighbourhood Development Plan Expenditure was listed as Item 8 on the Finance and Policy Committee Agenda published by the Executive Officer on March 9th. The Committee meeting was on Wednesday 15th March. This item relates to the spending of public funds, was it considered in public? The Parish Council asked for the steering group to publish minutes of our meetings. We did so as soon as we had a web site. Cllr Ives gave instruction for them to be removed as she disagreed with two items:- i) an incorrect spelling of a first name (hardly a hanging offence) ii) she disagreed with a minute recording what someone had said in a steering group meeting about a previous consultation undertaken by East Hampshire District Council. Cllr Ives was not at the steering group meeting and the minute was an accurate record of what had been said so how could she say the minute was wrong? The newly appointed Liaison Working Party consisting of four parish Councillors, Ives, Kirby, Jerrard and Winfield do not have to publish any minutes of their meetings nor advertise when they are meeting. They have published no selection criteria and are seeking applicants for membership of a new steering group so how can anyone know what skill sets they are looking for and the criteria they will use to select members? They will select all the members of the new steering group. Apparently as a working party they do not have to have any minutes. The composition of the steering group is vital to the success of an NDP. We were advised by the head of planning at EHDC and by two professional technical experts that we had the correct number for efficiency and a good skill set mix to do the job for our parish, I hope that the skills and work contributed by the members of the steering group will be carried forward and the work they have done will not be wasted :- Alasdair Cameron, Darren Ellis, Alfie Haynes, David Brocklebank, Ion Hobbs, Chantalle Fu, Martin Gibb, Michael Croucher and Rebecca Standish all worked well together and I hope they will want to carry on working. Cllr Standish sits on East Hampshire District Council. They are the lead planning authority for our parish and our plan has to march in conformity with their Plan. The usefulness of having a direct contact with that authority cannot be underestimated. It was saddening to hear a member of our parish council suggesting it was unnecessary to have a district councillor on the NDP steering group. I would say the complete opposite, it is necessary and very useful to have such direct access to what is happening at District level.

Re: Neighbourhood Development Plan - PL (16th Mar 2017 - 13:32:24) As a local parishioner I find the responses of Kat and Susan Garrett totally offensive !! And I am questioning whether any of these posts should have been published by the editor !! I find the personal attacks on counsellors extremely offensive and totally uncalled for in this forum !! I have no connections to the council but feel this is a personal vendetta and should be tackled via the appropriate channels in minuted meetings and not in a public online forum !!! To be fair and democratic which is what we as a parish should be supporting both sides should be represented and as these are totally one sided and Hence to me they are perceived as a form of cyber bullying !!! Totally Inappropriate !!!

Re: Neighbourhood Development Plan - Marian (16th Mar 2017 - 13:41:12) How very unprofessional for CLlr Garnett to post on here criticising members of the parish council with whom she has an issue. As a solicitor she should surely know better. Surely any grievance should be aired at a face to face meeeting and not on this site.

Re: Neighbourhood Development Plan - liz (16th Mar 2017 - 14:19:07) I have no problem with Parish Councillors airing their views on this website, in fact I think it is to be encouraged. This is a community website and it is the community's funds that the Parish Councillors manage.

Re: Neighbourhood Development Plan - andrew (16th Mar 2017 - 17:01:41) Kat please shut up.. how long have you lived here and what have you done for Liphook,,, yes i have been on council and yes i have lived here for over 50 years .. shame all this was ever invented ... years ago we would all have chated and sorted many things out .. and yes we were better off with that

Re: Neighbourhood Development Plan - Paul Robinson (16th Mar 2017 - 19:42:03) Having been a Parish Councillor and having attended, as a member of the public, recent Parish Council meetings when the Neighbourhood Development Plan has been discussed, I feel I am able to contribute something to this thread by way of understanding the current impasse. Having once been elected as a Parish Councillor I was required to complete a Declaration of Interest by the then Executive Officer which required me to declare anything that might preclude my suitability as a Parish Councillor. I recall at the time I was pressed to include everything from any property I owned or had a financial interest in. Even my membership of the Betjeman Society ! When I protested I was told that the Society might decide to relocate to Liphook and buy property which they might wish to extend. An important part of my induction was the need for my adherence to Standing Orders, the bible for Parish Councillors and the document that is present at every meeting and often referred to in matters of official procedure. This document was unequivocal with regard to Councillors making statements to the press or using websites. Such briefings must only be made through the Executive Officer. This might explain why the Council has not posted on this site in regard to this matter. What it does not explain is why Councillor Garnett has briefed the Liphook Herald and several times posted on this site, especially when she has been mentored by Councillor Croucher who was Chairman when she was co-opted and has considerable experience in Council procedure. We should not lose sight of the fact that the Neighbourhood Development Plan steering committee is an unelected body that is set up to represent the views of the community. It also has the power to spend substantial sums of public money raised by grants from the District Council, and the Parish Council. Paul Robinson

Re: Neighbourhood Development Plan - Blind Pew (17th Mar 2017 - 11:32:50) I agree with PL. Jane Ives is a competent and effective leader; and all other Councillors should be also thanked for their time and effort. An administrative glitch has been spotted and is being corrected - very good. It's a pity 'Kat' hasn't yet found a better way to spend his/her time.

Re: Neighbourhood Development Plan - liz (17th Mar 2017 - 13:55:54) I may be wrong but it seems the 'administrative glitch' has resulted in a huge amount of wasted time and work - or can the recommendations be re-presented or is it back to square one?

Re: Neighbourhood Development Plan - Sue (17th Mar 2017 - 16:52:40) Waste of time, work and more importantly money - see Thread headed "Parish Council Tax Rise".

Re: Neighbourhood Development Plan - Kat (17th Mar 2017 - 16:57:23) Mr Robinson, when I enquired about becoming a Parish Councillor, I was given a form and it did not say anything about my suitability to be a councillor depended on my financial and other interests. They told me that I would have to register my interests and sign a form if I was elected. So, I think your statement is not entirely accurate. I looked at Standing Orders some years back when I was trying to find something else on the Council website. I did find a rule about talking to the press etc. It didn’t seem to make any difference as councillors were over this website like a rash making all sorts of statements. There does not appear to be such a rule in the current document. So, I can only assume that means councillors are free to talk to the press and make postings as they wish, and some do. Another explanation is in an internal audit report I found on the Parish Council website. The report was written by Eleanor S Greene on 4th May 2016. She reports about “Liphook Talkback”, saying that “the website is not under (t) he control of the council and there is no evidence that the posters are BLPC residents”. Her recommended action is that “Members and officers should always use the council website and social media pages to engage with electors”. The Council response to this was “The council need to ensure that communications on behalf of the council are properly authorised and development of our new website should remove the need to use the Talkback website”. The Monitoring Arrangement was that “The BLPC and Talkback sites should be periodically reviewed.” And the Action was “ongoing”. So without any rules, perhaps Mrs Garnett feels she is quite at liberty to post on this site. Others must be following the guidance in the internal audit and not posting but some do!. As an ex-barrister, I am sure Mrs Garnett knows about the legal side of that. It also looks as though the mentoring by Councillor Croucher, who, you said, “has considerable experience in Council procedure” was completely ineffective. It questions why, with that experience, he failed to pick up the flawed process 13 months back and advise councillors about it. Your final paragraph is very pertinent. The public should therefore be able to attend all the meetings, and then the process would be completely transparent and open, and amongst other things we could all see what the money is being used for. Sadly, I fear the chances of that is zero.

Re: Neighbourhood Development Plan - ES (17th Mar 2017 - 22:46:50) This situation regarding the neighbourhood plan is history repeating itself , over the last few years the community has been ignored by the PC.giving priority to its own agendas in secret meetings and over reprepresenting themselves on certain bodies to make sure they get their own way and not considering that their representation may be a conflict of interest. They do not like not being in control and find ways of regaining control . The neibourhood plan is supposed to be community lead and not Parish council lead , as adhered to by other areas. The community is rapidly losing confidence in this parish council.

Re: Neighbourhood Development Plan - Kat (22nd Mar 2017 - 15:50:41) I see they are going to appoint a chairman of the Neighbourhood Development Plan Steering Group at an Extraordinary Meeting of the Parish Council next Monday 27th March. No candidates shown, so again, hardly in the spirit of openness and transparency. A rabbit will appear out of the hat. The secrecy continues, what a shame.

Re: Neighbourhood Development Plan - Paul Robinson (22nd Mar 2017 - 19:39:39) I am sure that, given the strident opinions you have expressed thus far on this thread, you would be a very good candidate. Go for it. Paul Robinson

Re: Neighbourhood Development Plan - KT (22nd Mar 2017 - 23:06:29) Kat It's hardly secret when it's a public meeting so you can go along which I'm sure you will and then you can report back on here.

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