Friday 30 March 2012

Question

The South West Community Assembly last night heard a re-run of my question about Sheffield Moors Partnership. Once again I asked about money. The gist of it is that I want to know what the respective partners believe they will be getting in any windfall of public funds on the public land they manage and/or lease.

Now that seems to be an essential component of any well informed debate on the future of the Sheffield Moors. We all know that this Master Planning process is setting up the situation for a sell off and that Stanage and the North Lees estate are already being considered as well by PDNPA (see Friends of the Peak's latest Peakland Guardian).


All is being driven by the conservation organisations not by the public and not by Sheffield City Council, although officers from SCC seem to find an open door into jobs at NT, and Kier so that should be borne in mind when deciding if they have the public's interests truly at heart.

I've not had an answer yet and if I ever do I'm doubtful it will be complete or in the form that I would choose. Openness is not what they do best.

There's a list of headings for income building up here:

HLS grants
Single Farm grants
HLF Landscape Wide Scheme
Nature Improvement Areas grants
Single projects funded through the Forestry Commission.
Other schemes derived from slush money from polluting industries.
Pension money extorted extracted from little old ladies (and l.o. men) on the doorstep when told they are helping to fund cuddly wildlife projects.
Ditto as they go into the supermarket.

Decisions about any of these should be scored out of ten for transparency and public accountability. Anyone finding one that scores over three let me know.


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