Northiam – Exercises in Democracy
HUGH SULLIVAN
Ballots for membership of parish councils up and down the country were scheduled to be held on 4 May, the same day as other local elections. In most wards in Rother – in fact all but four – the election was strictly nominal: there were as many parish council places on offer as candidates, if not more, so that any who put themselves forward would be automatically appointed.
But one parish at the edge of the district stood out as different. Here 16 candidates competed for nine places, and there was a turn-out of nearly 47% of registered voters – low for a general election but over ten percentage points above the average in the Rother district council election. If you’re looking for democracy in live action, the village of Northiam is the place to check it out.
At the centre of political interest is a 34-acre estate on the eastern side of Main Street known as St Francis Fields. Formerly owned by national animal rescue charity Blue Cross, it consists of stables, yards and various outhouses; two bungalows previously occupied by the charity’s staff; and a bunch of fields, orchards and a little woodland. In 2017 Blue Cross tried to raise money by seeking planning permission to develop part of the land as a housing estate.
Rother District Council planners turned them down, mainly because of access and traffic problems. They then offered the whole of the land to Northiam Parish Council for a total price, after negotiation, in the region of £1.4m.
Treasury loan
How would the Parish Council raise such a sum? Easy, at least in the telling. It borrowed the full amount as a lump sum from the Public Works Loan Board, a government agency supervised by HM Treasury, on approval from the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (now DLUHC), on a 50-year repayment term at a fixed interest rate of 3.3% per annum. Any parish council can do this, if they can make out sufficient community interest and a financially viable repayment plan.
In this case, a proportion of the repayments is currently covered by renting out the stables and bungalows. But a bigger percentage is financed from an addition to the parish precept which works out at approximately £48 per year additional council tax for a Band D property within the parish.
Residents voted by majority in two successive referenda to endorse their stake in this deal – first to confirm the principle of purchasing the estate, then to approve the price being paid and the amount of the precept contributions.
Management by CIC
Once the estate was bought, a community interest company St Francis Fields CIC was set up to manage it. The directors of this company, all volunteers, are distinct from the council and not members of it.
The CIC has opened up the land for local amenities, laying out permissive footpaths for dog-walkers and other leisure use. They are also preparing a couple of fields for a new parish burial site – the existing cemetery is effectively full and some money has been made available from a section 106 agreement entered into by developers elsewhere in the village.
The Northiam Conservation Society has planted a fruit orchard with rare and heritage trees. The company has renegotiated the lease of the stables and yard on a commercial basis on behalf of the council; the bungalows are let as affordable homes to appropriate tenants. What’s more, a pop-up pub has been set up for high days and holidays, which generates additional income.
And they all lived happily ever after? Unfortunately not. The conduct of the parish council over the past two years has been dogged by allegations of fraud and misrepresentation, deficiencies in accounting, accusations of bullying and intimidation. Four council chairs, three council clerks and various parish council members have successively resigned their respective offices during this period.
Complaints have been made and publicised, both in print and over social media, that the CIC has exceeded its management brief, has unreasonably favoured the interests of the stables tenant in its dealings with her – and has itself been plotting a building development on the land.
Rother District Council, finding itself fielding a number of complaints, set up an investigation, conducted by an external solicitor Nick Bennett, into some of these irregularities, and one dissident member Jon Streatfeild reported matters to Sussex Police, though nothing has come into the public domain as a result.
Election
Cynics might deduce from this saga that democracy and estate management just don’t mix – that community ownership is a recipe for trouble and strife, and that development is best left to private enterprise. There is, however, an alternative means of resolution: more democracy, as shown by the contested parish council election of two weeks ago.
None of the 16 candidates in this election labelled themselves as representing national political parties – i.e. there were no Tories, Labour, Lib Dems etc – but five of the candidates adopted the label Save St Francis Fields from Housing (SSFFH). They issued a brochure warning that “CIC ‘yes-men’” were planning a “dramatic increase” in council tax and risking the building of “excessive housing” on the estate by means of “back-door planning”.
Members of the CIC responded with an alternative leaflet referring to the SSFFH warnings as “misinformation”, protesting that there were no plans for a housing estate and pointing out that all estate policy was effectively controlled by the parish council.
The outcome? A decisive victory for those candidates endorsing the CIC management, and defeat for their detractors. None of the five SSFFH candidates were elected. Top of the poll was Pete Sargent, one of the directors of the CIC up to that point, who then resigned this role (as he promised he would) in order to take his place as parish councillor. New CIC chair Jonathan Strong hopes that this democratic endorsement will usher in an era of greater harmony. It’s perhaps too soon to judge.
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