High Level Scam

I have sent in a request to Natural England for full details of the Higher Level Stewardship (HLS) agreement dating from March this year with Sheffield Wildlife Trust. Among all the deceptions and manipulations surrounding SWT's management of this public land this is the most scandalous.

With people all over the country suffering from serious hardship and budgets for vital public services reduced, Natural England, the national organisation charged with handing out farm subsidies, is distributing huge sums to landowners in HLS payments with minimum public accountability, based on wholly subjective condition assessments. The success or failures of these schemes are rarely the subject of even minimal scrutiny apart from by those who administer and benefit from them in the first place. We're getting used to scandals and scams by people in public office but that does not mean we should be less shocked. Yet even the BBC bosses' payoffs get scrutinised by the Public Accounts Committee. I think that if it were any other sector of society but the largely Tory landowners who are the major benefactors of this there would be considerable indignation in the establishment press and  in parliament but Defra ministers such as Owen Paterson and Richard Benyon ensure their personal priorities are addressed.

In 2010 SWT were asked what kind of consultation was planned for their new management plan and the new agri environment scheme that would run alongside it. They distributed a paper  to the RAG meeting describing a number of phases to the consultation all to take place in 2011. These did not happen. In June 2013 Liz Ballard whose job is Chief Executive of SWT stood up before an audience at the Action for Involvement event explaining to the gathering just how responsive SWT is to the public and 'stakeholders' and how important is its relationship with the local people. They would shortly be consulting on their next management plan, she said.

It is now nearly a year since the last RAG meeting; meetings were once four or more times a year. A HLS agreement was put in place since March over which the public have had no say and no information, not even those who've been on SWT's mailing list for many years. This HLS hands over to them some £184, 321. A previous agreement now expired handed over annual funding on the clear understanding that certain management should be undertaken each year. This was still claimed and paid out even when the management conditions were not carried out.

This is an organisation that does not believe in consultation, nor in accountability, transparency and democracy. Anyone giving them any credibility or making excuses for them, should consider whether they can claim to have any judgement at all.

Its brazenness suggests it's a joke at our expense. Even opposition councillors do nothing. Some may even support SWT, being seriously afflicted with wilful blindness.

The land surrounding Blacka, in the hands of the RSPB and the National Trust, is in receipt of even greater sums and just as little public accountability.