So what is the East Devon Business Forum up to these days?

Not an awful lot.  A very  poor turnout for the EDBF December meeting (minutes here):   Councillor Brown chaired as usual (builder and planning consultant, wearing  his other hast as NFU representative, though he rarely talks about farming at these meetings), Roy Stuart (local businessman and potential large scale developer), Chris Lane (EDDC Officer, because Nigel Harrison is too senior to take minutes even though he is the Hon Secretary of EDBF), Greg Page-Turner (representing the Federation of Small Businesses and a developer in his own right), Bill Murray (Devon Contractors, building contractor), Nigel Harrison (the Hon Sec  who doesn’t take minutes), Andy Wood (Exeter Growth Point), Val Baker (Blackdown Hills Business Association), Councillor Diviani and Chris Down (Crealy and potential large scale developer), Tim Ford (local businessman and potential developer)

The list of people who sent their apologies was much longer!  So what did they discuss?  They managed to spend 2 hours on their business:  a long discussion on the future of the Business Forum which resulted in a list of bullet points, annotated by SIN:

The importance of the Business Forum linking with the Heart of the South West

EDBF minutes: LEP;   Residents have pointed out again and again that it is LEPs that have the money and prestige in the regions, not business forums.

[EDBF has no strong links with our local LEP]

The possibility of the Business Forum charging a fee for membership;

[but, oh dear, all these local businessmen planning developments of thousands of homes are just too poor to afford it (see below for ). ]

The AGM was the correct place to discuss the future of the Business Forum and the way forward;  

[will it be open to the public then?  Or small businesses with less than 5 employees.  Will they be allowed to speak? and see below where they actually say the best place to discuss this might be in a pre-meeting!]

 Charging a fee for membership may discourage smaller businesses from attending; 

[well, perhaps the VERY BIG businesses could be charged a higher fee than the smaller businesses.  Just a thought.]

Producing a list of the things the Business Forum could do to help business in East Devon;   

[Nine years this group has been in existence and it has only just thought of producing a list!]

 The possibility of holding a pre-meeting before the AGM with members to discuss a way forward for the Business Forum.  

 [Er, sorry, doesn’t that conflict with the  point aboive that the AGM is the correct place to discuss the way forward?  There are too many behind closed doors meetings in this part of the world.]

Consultation of the preparation of the Council’s budget 2013/14.  (addressed by EDDC’s senior Financial Officer, Simon Davey)

The 2013/14 budget showed a deficit of £1.1m. There were a number of measures proposed to balance this budget, these included saving vacant posts, increasing Council Tax, savings targets and taking balances from the New Homes Bonus.

[So, no cut in the EDBF Budget then!  No doubt EDBF told EDDC exactly what they expected to see in the budget:]

Corridor Improvement Package A303, A358 & A30

[was simply to say that two people will address them on this matter at a future meeting. ]

An update on the Exeter and East Devon Growth Point.

The house builders had reported double the level of interest in houses than they had anticipated. The housing Minster had been on site that day to announce further investment to accelerate the delivery of Phase 2 of Cranbrook including the town centre. It was noted that a ‘Meet the Buyer event’ to encourage local procurement had been arranged for the New Year.

] Now, you can read that paragraph two ways:  one that Cranbrook is a raving success.  Another could be that expectations from housebuilders was very low to begin with, so doubling their numbers might not be such a great thing and that it needed a loan (“investment”) to help it out and that things were so bad that they would need extra publicity to move things on!]

Update from the A3052 Corridor (an area where most of the group present at the December meeting has development interests) –

Consideration on the up-take of employment land within and beyond the A3052 corridor was delayed until the February 2013 meeting.

[Not exactly a sparkling discussion of important things affecting our area is it is it really worth £5,000 of taxpayer money, the constant services of one EDDC Officer and the occasional services of another, meeting space and office and administrative expenses all paid by us?]