Posted at 23rd November 2007 16:24BA Politics
It looks like things are beginning to hot up a little with a public consultation meeting next week and another outing to the House of Parliament in the offing. Time to put some steam into the blog.
Finally got the dredging petition off the website and into the post. Very many thanks to all of you for your support. Here is the letter which accompanied the petition:
Jonathan Shaw MP,
Department of & Rural Affairs,
Nobel House,
17 Smith Square,
London. SW1P 3JR.
Dear ,
The Norfolk & Suffolk Broads
I have pleasure in enclosing a petition (originally addressed to your predecessor, Barry Gardiner MP) which broadly complains about the historic lack of dredging and state of river maintenance carried out by the Broads Authority. The petition has been �signed� by 1,660 individuals. This would be an impressive number for a small geographic area, had not the petition been run on the Internet, where the vast majority of signatories had to make a positive effort to go on-line to express their dissatisfaction. Signatories range from large local landowners and landlords, through anglers and leisure yachtsmen to a wide variety of local businesses. I have personally received a large number of supporting calls and emails about this petition and the website has received 29,049 �hits� to date as individuals watch its progress.
Things could hardly be worse for the Broads Authority. Twice this year the Authority has been minuted in the House of Commons as being widely mistrusted, whilst poor consultation has caused costs of what ought to have fairly simple Private Bill about boat safety, to continue to escalate. Much of the navigation lobby has been alienated over a variety of issues, whilst a recently published report from the RSPB indicates that organisation considers the Broads Authority to have failed to deliver on the conservation front. I suggest the Broads Authority has engendered breaches with stakeholders and local residents.
Despite large and apparently continuous establishment increases (from a couple of dozen in the late �80s, to over a hundred), the Broads Authority still does not function effectively. My personal feeling is that the responsibilities of a National Park are too great to be economically viable for such limited geography and that the problems are structural. There are a number of instances where the limited resources that the small size will permit and consequent lack of expertise causes waste. Permit me to cite a couple of examples:
Tourism. Over the last seven or eight years the Broads Authority has spent several hundred thousand pounds commissioning consultants reports on various aspects of tourism. This expenditure has failed to produce a tangible result. Worse, no tourism strategy can be cost effectively targeted without information on movements within the market. The last market estimate was carried out in 1998 with no subsequent or comparable information.
Planning. The Broads Authority recently set up a Planning Department to deal with around three hundred Planning applications per annum. By definition, the area is virtually entirely floodplain, so arguably there should considerably fewer applications in future. In a number of locations, the tight geographic boundaries involve one side of a road falling within the Broads Authority�s jurisdiction, whilst the other remains with the neighbouring Local Authority. In several instances, both sides of these roads lie within the same conservation area. No sensible landscape policy is possible in these circumstances and it is difficult to identify any public benefit accruing from this additional expenditure. Further, Planning is an area where transparency and local accountability is most desirable.
The conclusion of the House of Commons committee hearing on the current Private Bill requested DEFRA and the Broads Authority jointly give consideration to locally elected representation to the Broads Authority. We have yet to be advised of the outcome. Whilst the Broads electorate is difficult to define, it would for example, be possible to provide local representation by handing some functions back to the neighbouring Local Authorities. I would personally welcome an independent inquiry into the structure of the Broads Authority. It may be that the Norfolk & Suffolk Broads could be more cost-effectively administered by a Harbour Conservancy.
Yours sincerely,
Jamie Campbell
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Category: Tourism.