My reason for the title of this piece, is the paragraph highlighted in bold.  It suggests that Lincolnshire has a unique system when it comes to the election of its county councillors.  Unlike everywhere else in the country that holds local government elections, with an individual standing in a defined location, it would seem that Mr McCartney thinks that this doesn’t happen in Lincolnshire.

He seems to think that it’s like the MPs, police and crime commissioners, the London mayor and no doubt mayors elected through devo deals.  Selected people are parachuted in to fight the election, based on their party politics, not their personal connection with the area they wish to represent.  Is he really that clueless, or does he know something the rest of us don’t?

Member of Parliament for Lincoln Karl McCartney said: “It’s hugely disappointing – but not at all surprising in some respects – that Lincolnshire’s County Councillors have voted against the “devolution and elected Mayor for Greater Lincolnshire” proposals”. Campaigners say would help develop transport, housing, skills-training and flood risk management schemes.

“I’ve always been very much in support of taking financial power away from the county councillors, most of whom are from the south of the county and tend to take a parochial outlook on matters wherever and whenever possible“.

Worryingly, Therasa May has made her first poor decision and regrettably, it’s one that has an impact on planning.

Even if this isn’t her idea and just something one of the surviving bright young policy wonks has been saving up, it’s a bad one.  It should be consigned to the bin, by the time MPs have returned from swanning around their various hot and sunny retreats.  I say swanning around because, let’s not forget, Brexit has not actually happened yet, so nothing’s changed.  The EU still rules the roost on everything, apart pieces of domestic policy madness, such as this one.

Community Infrastructure Levy, where it’s actually levied that is (not so South Holland)  is used to fund local infrastructure needs.  See bottom of page for a more detailed explanation.

Top slicing what is already, in many instances, an inadequate amount of money, to pass on to people who may well just bank it, or quickly move out of the area altogether, doesn’t make sense.

CIL is supposed to be about improving things for the community in general and reducing the impact of the development that generated the CIL in the first place, not lining the pockets of a few NIMBYs.

There will also be a direct impact on those areas that have a neighbourhood plan in place, as this will cut the percentage share of CIL they receive.

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The Telegraph

Ben Riley-Smith, political correspondent
7 AUGUST 2016 • 10:00PM
Homeowners in countryside villages and towns could be given cash payments to offset disruptive developments in their communities, the government has said.

Ministers’ concern has grown that people affected by unwanted developments near their houses are not adequately compensated.

It could allay residents’ frustration when they feel planning permission is being granted for a building project they oppose.

Theresa May is said to be personally interested in the idea as it fits with her drive to create an economy that “works for everyone”.

The scheme would follow the blueprint of a similar one announced over the weekend to give money directly to households affected by fracking.

It may also help tackle the problem of so-called Nimbys – people who support more house building provided that it is “not in my back yard”.

Ministers and civil servants in the Communities Department are reviewing the Community Infrastructure Levy, a charge placed by councils on developments that have more than 100 square metres of floor space.

They are now considering whether some of the money raised by the charge can be handed directly to homeowners as well as spent on local services.

A government source told The Telegraph: “One of the things we’re interested in is if we can get a better linkage between a community agreeing to take certain kinds of development and actually then getting money to spend on improving their local area in return.

“Let’s say you’re a village and you accept a significant housing development on the edge of the village, at the moment you might not see very much of the money that’s comes in from that development at all. It might be sent elsewhere in the district.”

Asked if households could be given cash payment directly, the source said: “Absolutely there is some thinking about what mechanisms can you come up with that ensure that the people affected by development actually see the benefit of that development.”

The move could help the Government hit targets for house building while keeping the communities affected on side in the coming year.

There were concerns that the communities were becoming less able to veto planning applications under George Osborne, the former chancellor, as he changed rules to encourage more new houses.

Environmental charities attacked the Tories last year for planning rule changes and warned that the green belt was under growing threat despite an election manifesto promise to protect it.

Announcing a similar change to the way communities affected by fracking will be compensated, Mrs May on Sunday referred to her drive to rebalance the economy.

“The Government I lead will be always be driven by the interests of the many – ordinary families for whom life is harder than many people in politics realise,” she said.

“As I said on my first night as Prime Minister: when we take the big calls, we’ll think not of the powerful but of you.”

However environmental groups attacked the announcement. Doug Parr, Greenpeace UK’s chief scientist, said: “The Government has tried to sweeten the fracking pill with cash bribes before, and public opposition just kept on growing.

“The simple truth is that people’s concerns about climate change and their local environment cannot be bought off with a wad of cash.”

“You can’t put a price on the quality of the air you breathe, the water you drink, and the beauty of our countryside.”

*What can the Community Infrastructure Levy be spent on (and by whom)?
The levy can be used to fund a wide range of infrastructure, including transport, flood defences, schools, hospitals, and other health and social care facilities (for further details, see Section 216(2) of the Planning Act 2008, and Regulation 59, as amended by the 2012 and 2013 Regulations). This definition allows the levy to be used to fund a very broad range of facilities such as play areas, parks and green spaces, cultural and sports facilities, academies and free schools, district heating schemes and police stations and other community safety facilities. This flexibility gives local areas the opportunity to choose what infrastructure they need to deliver their relevant Plan (the Local Plan in England, Local Development Plan in Wales, and the London Plan in London). Charging authorities may not use the levy to fund affordable housing.

On our way home from a very pleasant afternoon spent celebrating a family friend’s wedding with a pinic at Burghley Park, Stamford – if you’ve never been go, it’s beautiful and free to enter – we had an encounter with the subject of this post.

Although today’s weather was not wall to wall sunshine, it still gave us enough excuse to drop the soft top on the Mini for the drive home, adding a nice finish to the day.

Turning on to Littleworth Drove towards Spalding Common, a red Ford van was coming towards us, roof festooned with ladders and driver’s window partially open.  You might think the window was open because the driver liked to get some fresh air and keep alert whilst driving.  This would be a commendable if it were true, but the opposite was the case, because this lout was breaking the first of several motoring laws, by smoking in what was a obviously a work vehicle and therefore technically a workplace.  Such smoking had been banned since 2007 and includes shared work vehicles.

The van also had a company name on it, confirming its work van status.  Looking at the video I’ve captured, it appears to start with a letter S, but the reflection and angle means I was unable to get more of it, more’s the pity.

What I did get however, is a very nice shot of the number plate.  Which, just in case you have any difficulty reading it, is:

LG 07 GYR

The driver then broke another law, by not being in full control of his vehicle at all times.  How could he be?  As he saw us approaching him, in an open topped car, he appears to have gone out of his way to try to flick his burning cigarette end into our open car.  Waving his hand out of the window of his moving vehicle for no good reason to deposit litter on to the public highway, makes that criminal offence three.

I got a good enough view of the offending butt and could see that it was actually a roll-up. He obviously needs to rip off a few more of his cash in hand customers, so he can afford to buy tailor mades from some of the dodgey people he knows who no doubt smuggle them in.

Arguably this louts most serious offence, if I could ever prove intent, would be the act of attempting to send a lighted, or even just hot cigarette butt into our moving vehicle.  Any object intentionally thrown towards another vehicle is bad enough, but when that vehicle is open and that object could easily hit the driver in the eye, causing serious injury and a crash, that is assault with intent in my book.

If anybody recognises this vehicle and therefore the company that owns it, I would love to hear from you, in confidence of course.  As a minimum, I am going to give a witness statement to our environmental enforcement officer, along with the photo.  He will then write to this litter lout, warning him that what he did might only have been a cigarette butt, but it’s still littering.  I should make it clear, I will not be given access to the information he uses, that would also be a criminal offence! 

I’ve borrowed this from Christopher Booker’s column in today’s Sunday Telegraph, because I think our new prime minister has made an incredibly important decision on the nations behalf and should be fully supported. My hope is, that this isn’t just a delay, but an actual halt to the insanity of Cameron and Osborne’s love affair with the Chinese and their money.

‘IN THE nick of time, it seems, a glimmer of sanity is at last breaking in on what I have long been describing as the most insane single project a British government has ever put its hand to. We can credit the decision to put on hold our agreement for EDF to build the most expensive power station in the world, at Hinkley Point, to Theresa May’s joint chief of staff, Nick Timothy. This was the man who, having back in April described the Climate Change Act as “a monstrous act of self-harm”, was also behind the abolition of the Department for Energy and Climate Change (Decc).
Until now, the absurd story of Hinkley has been as vivid an example of the self-deluding power of groupthink as could be imagined. All those ministers swept along by it, such as Ed Miliband, Chris Huhne and Ed Davey, should hang their heads in shame. This culminated in that humiliating spectacle last year (as also noted by Mr Timothy) when David Cameron and George Osborne invited the President of China to London in October and begged him to lend us billions of pounds to buy a reactor design so flawed that it could almost certainly never be built.
Nothing should have brought this home more forcefully, as I noted last year, than the contrast between the Hinkley project and the way South Korea is building four nuclear reactors for the United Arab Emirates, to an already proven design and at only a fraction of the cost.
Although the UAE began talks with Korea only in 2009, the year we began negotiating with EDF for its two 1600 megawatt (MW) reactors at Hinkley, the four 1400 MW reactors for the UAE (hence their name APR1400s) are already under construction, with the first due onstream next year and the rest to follow by 2020. For £15 billion, they will thus supply 5600 MW of electricity, much more than Hinkley’s 3200 MW, so grotesquely subsidised that even Decc admits its cost could eventually be £37 billion.
This is the dreadful fiasco from which, in “the Nick” of time, it seems we may now be saved. Of course we desperately need reliable nuclear power to make up for the inadequacy of all those intermittent wind turbines. But we should forget about the French and Chinese and get on the phone to Korea as fast as possible.
We should also be looking hard at “mini-nukes”, using industrially-produced small nuclear reactors similar to those which will be powering our Trident submarines. But that is a story for another day.