Unitary Status Disgrace
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Initial Submission Resubmitted by
Email to the Boundary Committee
(Sent 12th May 2009)
PLEASE NOTE -
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From: Jim Harle
To: reviews@boundarycommittee.org.uk
Sent: Tuesday, May 12, 2009 2:56 PM
Subject: Summerway Submission Email 2
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Dear Review Manager,
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Unitary Status Options Within Devon
Summerway Submission
(Originally submitted as ‘Unitary Status Options Within Devon -
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INTRODUCTION
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I am one of a number of volunteers who have given significant service to the community over many years through the Summerway Junior Lawn Tennis Club. Both Exeter City Council, and to a lesser extent Devon County Council, have failed this superb children’s facility miserably in recent years, leaving volunteers unable to function in a locality desperate for their resources and expertise.
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This submission should be of particular value to the Boundary Committee on three counts:
(a) Our extensive dealings with both Councils, especially the City Council, and
(b) This document’s attention to detail, and
(c) This submission is essentially based on documented facts rather than mere impressions.
Its greatest usefulness will be achieved by being evaluated by a member of the Boundary
Committee who understands old-
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Without any personal advantage or benefit to myself, I have been campaigning for some while on behalf of the Club, the underprivileged, and the best interests of the children and community. I am motivated entirely by my strong integrity, originating from an inborn sense of justice, and certainly not from any surfeit of emotion or personal animosity towards anyone. Throughout the campaign, I have endeavoured to highlight the facts in as unbiased and polite a manner as possible.
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This personal submission to the Boundary Committee has been necessitated by the City Council’s desire for unitary status and increased power. Evidence points strongly towards its unworthiness, as it has demonstrated to many of us that it is incapable of the proper exercise of its current authority, and its inability to understand the broader aspect. In short, it has shown itself to be superficial, muddled, dictatorial, elitist, deluded and isolated from reality, untruthful, arrogant, obdurate, hypocritical, precipitate, unbelievably destructive, undemocratic, and possibly even vindictive. The Council seems to view statements like this as abusive, as it is unwilling to face truth or unwelcome criticism, preferring instead to bury its head in the sand. I trust the Boundary Committee will make a detailed examination of this list, for which there is ample indication and documentary proof.
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In marked contrast to the City Council, the Club and I have attempted to be rigorous in our approach. We have tried by democratic means to encourage Devon County Council and Exeter City Council to maintain and develop the partnership we have enjoyed with local government for decades to enable us to serve the community’s children and their families more extensively. Sadly, the Councils seem to have totally lost their earlier vision. By its ineptness, Exeter City Council has ousted excellent role models and reduced the two busiest municipally owned tennis courts in Exeter to a state of desolation, thereby depriving the children of structured and supervised activity. This surely fosters vandalism, drinking and the growth of gang culture.
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DETAIL
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In support of my assertions, I am providing links to the web giving access to further information. These links need to be followed and the material examined closely if the Boundary Commission is going to do more than just gloss over submissions. As a quick introduction to give basic structure to Summerway Tennis issues, we have a video (00:01:30) on YouTube, the majority of which was screened three times on Five News.
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An Exeter City Council spokesman made false statements to Five News to counter our video. This is the sort of behaviour that completely undermines the Council’s credibility. I tried to tackle this untruthfulness using the Freedom of Information Act.
I had to send a second request when the Council prevaricated.
In the end, we never received any evidence of the spokesman’s statements, documentary or otherwise, which is not surprising in the light of their false and unfounded nature.
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The Exeter City Council which established a partnership in response to members of the community in 1972 had vision, and was responsive to its citizens.
The current Council might deny a partnership and claim that all that occurred was the granting of a licence (equivalent to a modern day lease). If it does so, it will only further illustrate the extent to which today’s Council has lost sight of the wider picture. Whatever it is called, a partnership was established in reality.
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Responsibility for the Club passed from Exeter City Council to Devon County Council
under local government reorganisation in 1974. Not only did DCC honour the Club’s
licence but, a year before it was due to expire, granted a 28-
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Over twenty years passed with the Club enjoying huge success, but severely restricted by having only two courts, making it unable to satisfy the demand for membership. Hence, there was always a long waiting list which could only be partially addressed as places became available. Summerway was identified as one of the best junior tennis clubs in the UK, being featured in the December 1997 edition of Ace Magazine as such, along with two other larger junior clubs blessed with superior facilities.
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The perfect opportunity for expansion occurred when Education was reorganised in Exeter, and Summerway Middle and Beacon Heath First schools were scheduled to integrate on the latter’s site as Willowbrook Primary. Wishing to grasp the chance to extend its service, the Club drew up detailed proposals of its vision for the future, presented in May 1999.
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These proposals were widely circulated, and we were in discussion and correspondence with Sport England for funding and the City Council’s planning department. The feedback was extremely positive, and all we needed was a conditional lease, dependent on the Club obtaining funding and planning permission. Local government, particularly Devon County Council as our landlord, failed to grasp the opportunity, procrastinating instead so that we were unable to make an application for a lottery grant or planning permission, and capitalise on our bright prospects. Sport England were approaching us because we were ticking all the right boxes, and an example of correspondence reflects our growing frustration with local government. Our positive attitude was consistently met with inertia, characterised by absence of explanation and news of progress.
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To their profound shame, neither DCC nor ECC ever worked though our proposals with us, and neither has approached us for information to make a proper assessment of the Club. As sitting tenants at the time who have never been consulted, we doubt that the plans which we had prepared so carefully with our extensive knowledge and experience of the locality ever received serious consideration above the lowest officer level in either Council. Particularly offensive to several of us was the failure of Councillors and officials to acknowledge or respond to our letters and emails, and the complete absence of specific information regarding our lease. After nearly seven years of frustration and with the expiration of our lease less than three months away, the Club Committee sent an email, or letter where there were no email facilities, in desperation to every Councillor on both the County and City Councils.
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I was astounded to discover that the majority of Councillors paid so little proper attention to the Committee’s email, signed by the Club Committee and sent from its email account, that they thought it was from an individual and attributed it to me personally. I was merely the postman, as Club administrator, and because the email was sent from my computer, some unfriendly Councillors tried to shoot the messenger. This was incompetent and unfair, and prompted a personal response to all the Councillors.
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There is a big question mark as to whether the huge damage caused to the Club’s membership in the two or three years leading up to the expiry of the lease was the result of crass Council ignorance or a deliberate ploy on its part to engineer the Club out of the premises. Both John, the Club’s brilliant coach, and I commit long term and provide stability, each having served the Club and community in our respective capacities for over 25 years. Others have also committed long term. An educational Club like Summerway requires security and an assured future, but the City Council seems incapable of distinguishing differing types and needs, arguing that all clubs should be treated the same. The Council seems muddled, and incapable of applying common sense.
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Around the time the Club Committee emailed all Councillors in desperation, and entirely independently of this action, two meetings were arranged between Club representatives and the Councils. The first meeting was with ECC and DCC officers, and eight days later with ECC and DCC Councillors and a DCC officer. It transpired that all the Councillors were totally unaware of any prior meeting between Club and officers, which didn’t inspire confidence in internal Council communications and competency. The meeting with officers took place in an atmosphere of goodwill on both sides, but later proved to be the start of Exeter City Council bullying. The Leisure Manager’s stated attitude was, ‘This is what we are going to do, and it’s all bad news for the Club’. Never having discussed our proposals with us, it is no wonder that serious dissension ensued.
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No practical response to the Committee’s cry was received until after the lease had run out. It then became abundantly clear that the Club’s concerns were fully justified. The proposed terms were inappropriate, unsustainable and unworkable in practice. They were obviously the efforts of those living in a world of their own who had lost touch with the way in which the real world works.
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The Club was unable to function normally thereafter, and sought to negotiate meaningfully with the Councils, particularly the City Council. Were the Club litigious, we should have paid the rent, even though DCC never requested payment in 2006, and sued for reasonable terms under the Landlord and Tenant Act 1954 when the landlord failed to comply with the terms of the old lease. This would have been foreign to the nature of the Club, which has always valued cooperation and esteemed its partnership with local government. We have since discovered that local government no longer has any such scruples, valuing partnerships only if financially based, and is completely legalistic to the exclusion of moral considerations.
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In November 2006, revised terms for a new lease were presented by two ECC officers
to members of the committee. Some of us were absolutely stunned by their unsuitability,
and with several essential terms presented as non-
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The burden we were being asked to bear was not just the Club’s expenses, but those of maintaining City Council property as well. Clearly, the Council was after the funds we had built up over the years for expansion. This was money only accumulated because people, John and I in particular, didn’t claim our due expenses out of love for the Club and a wish to see it expand. There were other serious objections to the terms offered.
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The Club was so very successful because the parents and volunteers were able to manage the Club without Council interference. Devon County Council clearly understood this. Exeter City Council, on the other hand, not only wanted our money, but wished the exercise control. This is further evidence of its lust for power.
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These terms and their inevitable consequences were considered at the Club’s 34th Annual General Meeting shortly afterwards.
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The Special General Meeting resulting from the Annual General Meeting was held the following month, January 2007. Larger premises were required due to the high level of concern. If the Boundary Committee is rigorous in its deliberations, it will need to examine closely the resolutions passed, noting the amount of agreement reflected by the voting. I voted consistently with the great majority, and am becoming increasingly aware that the Club’s concerns about Local Government are widely shared across the City.
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The Club’s decision to vacate the premises was not a voluntary one, but something we were obliged to do under great duress. Please ask to see my letter to John Penaligon, Devon Property, dated 26 February 2007, which will be in the County’s files. The Exeter City Council were chiefly responsible, because it changed the use of the field without making proper provision, exposing the Club premises to intolerable vandalism. Neither Council took steps to protect the Club. Future events indicate strongly that this tactic was deliberate on the City Council’s part. The last thing we wished to do was vacate. We were driven out by a level of vandalism with which we were unable to cope, and the constant failure of the City Council to negotiate meaningfully and give us some hope for a future. Put bluntly, we were ‘constructively evicted’, cf. constructive dismissal.
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The City Council’s smugness, autocratic behaviour and disregard for citizens prompted me to launch a website in January 2007 to try to make some impression on the Councils. I was extremely careful to indicate a proper balance on its home page, which has remained unchanged to the present time.
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The domain hosting the website was deliberately given a provoking name for a sound reason.
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I called both DCC and ECC Councillors’ attention to the site in an open letter dated 31st of that month, protesting about the ‘constructive eviction’ of the Club from its traditional premises.
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The open letter produced a knee-
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I found the Leisure Manager’s letter offensive, but was circumspect in my response almost a week later and bore no malice. My reply was polite, straight to the point, made reasonable comments, and raised several queries. These were essential to try to take matters forward.
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Here we need to compare the detailed and rigorous approach we adopt with the unwillingness of ECC’s representatives to face up to detail.
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This unwillingness is demonstrated to perfection in the Leisure Manager’s response two days later. He declined to respond to my comments and queries, indicated by the use of “we” that not only he, but the City Council also, refused to deal with me, and tried to drive a wedge between the Summerway Committee and myself. I found his explanation for such behaviour ludicrous, and felt he was being lazy and wished to duck issues he was unwilling to face. This unjustified action on his part was hugely damaging to negotiations, and was to have far reaching effects in preventing closure. Cutting the lines of communication is not the way to resolve matters. Please examine carefully my email responding to this ostracism, and judge for yourself who was being reasonable.
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I don’t wish to be rude, but I have been much struck by the woolly thinking and inability
to make distinctions exhibited by many City Council personnel with whom I have dealt.
For example, the Council says ‘the Club won’t negotiate’, when it means ‘the Club
won’t bow to our inflexible terms’, and the reality is ‘the Club would love to negotiate
properly without non-
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This is particularly evident in the way Council personnel seem unable to distinguish my roles as an individual and as a member of the Summerway Committee. There seems to be some impression that I am on my own, and the Club has different views. Having compared the Club’s resolutions passed at its January 2007 Special General Meeting with material posted on my websites, why is the Council treating me so vindictively? Shooting the messenger who expresses the views of many concerned about the Club and the demise of democracy in our City is not going to solve problems and aid society. Fortunately, I have the moral support of hundreds (a growing number) who receive my emails and remain informed about Summerway matters, so I am encouraged to persevere with my campaign on behalf of the Club, a campaign which now extends to include social justice. With backing like this, being victimised by the City Council has not fazed me so far.
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The Council tried to pursue negotiations with other members of the Committee. While willing, these members had heavy work and family commitments, and so were not at liberty to respond as quickly as a retired person appointed and dedicated to the Club’s communications. The Council was unreasonable in expecting these other members to do my job, and it finally seems to have lost patience, acting precipitately in the midst of negotiations with regard to the demolition of the clubhouse. This was categorically wrong by any standards.
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At the time of writing, we have not yet discovered whether the Summerway tragedy originated from Community & Environment, Planning, the Chief Executive or some other source within the City Council. Owing to the Council’s refusal to deal with me, I was obliged to use the intermediary offices of our Member of Parliament, Ben Bradshaw, who has been supportive of the Club throughout and proved himself an excellent constituency MP. Through Ben, I put points to Hazel Ball, ECC Director of Community and Environment and a member of the Executive, who had become involved. Hazel declined to comment to Exeter’s MP, probably because she was unable to do so on rational grounds without revealing serious shortcomings and errors of judgement within the Council.
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Summerway was community in action. To refer to it as private is plain ignorance, arising from never having seen the Club or the extent of its activities. Summerway was (and is) a registered Community Amateur Sports Club, open to everyone having a legitimate interest to the limit of its capacity. City Council officers, wilfully arranging the demolition of the children’s clubhouse from the isolation of their ivory tower, were behaving in a cruel and inhuman manner. They were not destroying a building – they were destroying community and damaging our children. Cruel and inhuman!
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It was not just the wooden hut originally leased either, but the electricity supply,
toilets, wash basins, kitchen facilities, etc. which the Club had installed and which
the Council has destroyed. It declined to allow the Club’s structural engineer to
examine the clubhouse with the City’s surveyor, so we have to assume that the Council
wished to reach an unreasonable decision for its own dubious purposes. Decisions
to demolish were made in-
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Should unitary status be given to a Council which acts like this, and then carries on as if it was justified and couldn’t care less? Besides endorsing such action, unitary status would expose citizens of Exeter & District to further abuse. Boundary Committee, please spare us.
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The hundreds of families and thousands of people who have benefited from Summerway Tennis will remember the clubhouse with affection. As Ace Magazine observed, “The clubhouse, which looks as if it’s been lifted straight out of a Famous Five novel, epitomises the charm of this club, but there is certainly nothing twee about the tennis played here”. No amount of unsupervised facilities will ever atone for the loss of the Club, its many volunteers and its role models. We need community, and Exeter City Council seems bent on giving us environment at community’s expense. The clubhouse was an asset which the Council should have protected, but chose to despise because it didn’t meet modern specifications. This was no reason to destroy the Club. Common sense and duty to the community should have prevailed.
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The City Council has pleaded poverty in withdrawing local government support from Summerway. The average annual cost to the public purse of maintaining the premises over the last thirty years is a few hundred pounds, and certainly less than a thousand. The poverty plea comes from a Council which can find hundreds of thousands of pounds of taxpayers money in support of those who can afford to buy their leisure, but disregards and deprives those who are hard up.
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It then seeks to waste £70,000 on a decorative ornament without proper consultation and against clear public opinion. Please see recent editions of the Heavitree & District News.
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The Heavitree Arch also highlights with clarity a truth which we have discovered amidst the complexity of the Summerway saga. This is that Exeter City Council is actually a bureaucracy run by its officers, and not a democracy run by our elected representatives. We have discovered that Councillors represent the Council to the people, and not the people to the Council.
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The City Council’s cries to preserve local democracy are misleading and meaningless when it doesn’t exist in reality.
Please also click the ‘ this query ’ link towards the bottom of the page just viewed.
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The Freedom of Information Act has been a great blessing in the restoration of some public confidence in open government. At the same time, those in government pursuing their own agendas must hate it. My ward Councillors both refused to acknowledge or reply to my email expressing concern about bullying of the Club by a Council officer. They persisted in their refusal when I sent reminders a month later. So much for Councillors representing their electorate. The release of documents under the Freedom of Information Act revealed what was going on. Even I was shocked when I discovered the underhand and dishonourable behaviour of the then Leader of the Council, Cllr Peter Edwards. There is an overview of the surreptitious conduct of Cllr Edwards in an update to Ben Bradshaw MP.
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For specimen evidence of what was happening unbeknown to any of us, and some of this
Councillor’s misconceptions, please contact Exeter City Council and ask to see (under
the Freedom of Information Act):
(a) The email from Hazel Ball to Ian Cowe and Alan
Caig sent 14 June 2007 at 16:13, and
(b) The email from Cllr Peter Edwards to Alan Caig, Ian Cowe and Cllr Connel Boyle, Cc: Hazel Ball sent 19 July 2007 at 20:25.
Regarding his second paragraph, there is no such letter as he describes because we never wanted to relinquish the lease. In any case, correspondence regarding the vacation of the premises under duress were handled by the Club Secretary and not me, though I was the one who finally physically passed the keys to Mr Penaligon of DCC. Furthermore, “... it was him that broke of talks with us” would be a direct lie, as talks effectively ended with the Council’s precipitate demolition of the clubhouse when the Club was waiting for a date from the Council regarding a meeting. The Club never wished to break off talks. If you would like to view the email I received from Cllr Edwards sent 19 January 2006 at 22:02, please ask and I will forward it to you.
In case you are wondering, this is the City Councillor currently campaigning for more power. Perhaps you can sense our concern.
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Even though the Club and its plans for expansion existed in reality many years before any Council plans for the field were dreamed up, the Council has seemed obsessed by the creation of a park for some while. Everything had to be subservient to it. It seems the Club was in the way, so pressure needed to be applied, and its protection was presumably seen as counterproductive to the Council’s plans. The courts were needed for the public. Having bullied the Club out of its premises and demolished the clubhouse, the City Council put its grand ivory tower plan into operation. It considers two courts open to the public as more important than the Club. This is evidence of more woolly thinking. The Council has confused free use of tennis courts with the provision of structured, supervised activity.
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The result of the Council’s plans and action was total failure. We have posted a video (02:42) about it on YouTube. We hope to publish a ‘broken glass’ video eventually. Underlying our concern was that broken glass was left on court as a public hazard for more than ten weeks (full photographic evidence available), which says a great deal about the City Council’s level of court maintenance. The Council has been unable to keep a net up for use by the public due to local vandalism.
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With some help, I have been using my initiative to try to provide some sort of regular tennis for local children throughout the summer. The week before last it was raining consistently on our regular evening, and still several children insisted on playing in the rain. Three of the mothers stood around in miserable conditions. We had no facilities to offer now the clubhouse has been needlessly destroyed. Of course, these children couldn’t play the game regularly any other way, as the City Council has wiped out affordable tennis in Exeter. Without facilities, I cannot see any way whereby we could hold our winter sessions. We’ll have to wait for next year. What a miserable Council, causing such hardship!
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CONCLUSION
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Exeter City Council currently ensures that Exeter’s citizens are Losers. We pay our Council Tax to enable services for the community – the people of Exeter. The City Council squanders significant sums of our money, which it seems to regard as its own, on vacuous and inappropriate additions and changes to the material environment. At the same time, it deprives localities and the children of role models and structured activity, fostering vandalism, drinking and gang culture, which we citizens are obliged to endure. Its provision for those with money and its neglect of those struggling to make ends meet is an utter disgrace. It frequently preaches fairness, and blatantly does not practise it.
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The same is true of democracy. The City Council grants it lip service, sometimes even in a grandiose manner, but this is empty and meaningless. The Council makes a mockery of democracy by its failure to exercise it. By denying the democratic rights of loyal citizens, and with many Councillors and officials doing their own thing regardless, the City Council is showing itself to be disreputable. It is not democracy when Councillors act on the opinions of unelected Officers while refusing to listen to the wishes and represent those who elected them to office.
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Because of the disparity between its meaningless words and its substantive actions, the City Council’s costly advertising in support of its bid for unitary status is offensive to the many citizens with experience of the Council’s mendacity. Cognisant citizens are not impressed by a low Council Tax inadequate to provide for the community’s essential needs, especially when administered so arbitrarily, inefficiently and in such a biased way. An average Council Tax, funding the community’s needs for safety and services without waste, would be infinitely preferable. Unless I’m much mistaken, the taxpayer is having to pay for this misleading advertising promoting Exeter City Council’s lust for more power.
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When a Council tries to turn simple, highly successful partnerships into complex, commercial, inappropriate and unworkable schemes of its own, it has completely lost the plot. When that Council resorts to bullying and dubious tactics to override its citizens and damage the community, it is behaving despicably. If the Boundary Committee recommends that Exeter City Council should be granted unitary status, it will be endorsing this behaviour.
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I would like to think that Exeter could ultimately achieve unitary status, but until
the City Council puts its house in order and develops real integrity with regard
to truth, even-
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Neither can we be sure that Devon County Council has not also deteriorated in a similar manner, putting materialism before the people’s welfare. Consequently, to foist a single Devon unitary authority on us would be forcing us to accept a pig in a poke. Many of the electorate would like to know the details and implications of such a recommendation, and be allowed a democratic decision on the proposals, rather than having any solution forced upon us.
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My penultimate point is surely most important. The Boundary Committee was required to carry out its current enquiries before Britain was hit by the very recent global financial crises. In my opinion, it would be extremely unwise to restructure local government at this point in time. Inflexibility in responding to this huge new factor, which is now an essential part of the equation, would be foolhardy and inexcusable.
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Consequently, I submit that the prudent recommendation is to maintain the STATUS QUO until greater stability is achieved. If this was not an option before the ‘credit crunch’, such an exclusion needs to be reconsidered with the greatest urgency.
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Finally, if the choice had to be made at the present time between a single unitary Council covering the whole of Devon excluding Plymouth and Torbay, and two unitary Councils, one covering Exeter & District and the other the rest of Devon (excluding the current unitaries), the former option of a single unitary Council has to be preferred. As regards Councillors, only one tried to listen to us, viz. Cllr Saxon Spence of Devon County Council. All the City Councillors involved failed to listen, and were concerned only with promoting the Council’s viewpoint. The underhand behaviour of Cllr Edwards was particularly obnoxious. Regarding Council Officers, those from Devon County have shown a far higher degree of professionalism and integrity than those of Exeter City in our experience. Regarding the Councils as a whole, Devon County missed a marvellous opportunity to benefit the community around the millennium, but has always treated us with consideration and respect. Exeter City, in contrast, spouts wondrous words at variance with its actions, lives in a world of its own, and shows alarming signs of having degenerated into an undemocratic bureaucracy. The City Council has not treated us with respect, and seems completely unworthy of unitary status.
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Yours sincerely,
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Jim Harle.
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Footnote to this submission
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They say there are none so blind as those that will not see, so I guess there are
none so deaf as those that will not hear. Through the Summerway Junior LTC, I have
enjoyed an excellent working relationship with Devon County Council and Exeter City
Council’s Sports Development Team for many years. Remote City officers and Councillors
have arbitrarily decided that the Club, its coach, administrator, volunteers and
role models are no longer valued, and determined to be deaf to what the Club has
to say. Unwisely, the City Council has never consulted meaningfully, nor properly
assessed the Club, nor been willing to negotiate without bullying. I have been victimised,
cutting the lines of communication and thereby denying the possibility of closure.
Many of us feel that appealing to the Local Government Ombudsman and/or the Audit
Commission would not be helpful, as we currently have no confidence that these bodies
wouldn’t also be mindless, working only to a prescribed set of rules inappropriate
to our case. We feel the issues require intelligence, a broad understanding, sound
judgement, common sense, discretion and a love of people. I am a person who thrives
on cooperation, and loves to serve the community where the community makes its own
wise decisions. Government shows it has lost touch with people, pursuing its own
interests, and desperately needs to reconnect with reality for all our sakes. Having
been deprived of the opportunity to serve at Summerway, I am campaigning for restitution
for our deprived community, and a return to democracy and sanity. While Exeter City
Council continues to refuse to listen, communicate and act with care and compassion,
I hope to persevere with my campaign until someone of superior influence does. I
apologise for any slips or lack of clarity within this submission. I would have
liked more time than has been available to refine and polish it somewhat. If you
need clarification or further information, you are welcome to call me on 01392-