Lynton and Barnstaple - Operations and Development

There's a saying about these sorts of areas : "Those with get-up-and-go have got up and gone".

 

Its all gone quiet on that front at the moment, even a shareholder i was talking to at the weekend has heard nothing for ages

 

More likely to have picked up a lot of conflicting advice . . . .

 

Do you actually mean opinions?


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I prefer to think it as feedback

 

"Advice", "opinion" and "feedback" are three different things, and serve different purposes. All can be useful, but all can be a big distraction.

 

As something of an aside...

Today is the 7th March, which apparently now marks the - hopefully temporary - end of the Phase 2A dream. Ironically, with one of my other 'hats' on, 57 years ago today marked the end of passengers services on the S&DJR. This is thriving again now at Midsomer Norton South, where - in a comparison with WB-KL - extension in one direction is blocked by a missing bridge and in the other by an infilled cutting.....

 

Several posters have made reference to the fact that, subsequent to the granting of the original planning application in 2018, there have been changes to the legal framework around how Grampian conditions should be drafted and applied. I've been trying to get a better understanding of what these changes are, without much success. Does anyone have a good reference for this?

 

I found this article which gives some insight.

 

The skill of a good recipient of such comments is to know which is which.

 

From https://www.lynton-rail.co.uk/news/view/parracombe-appeal
There are now funds, and does it include permission for the trackbed to be laid now to bridge 65, or was it conditional on buying all the trackbed to Blackmoor, so permission has now expired?

 

The permission has now expired, I understand there will be a strategy announcement in due course. Members have been notified via newsletter.

 

I think he was being tongue-in-cheek to a rather onerous request.

 

I completely agree. But the greater challenge is to provide the circumstances in which they can be provided usefully and expeditiously. And in this case, that means getting past the "I wouldn't have done it like that" and "if I wanted to go there I wouldn't have started from here" level into constructive engagement with "here we are, how do we proceed now".

 

According to the previously-mentioned Newsletter, "The 'Return to Parracombe Fund' will now be suspended and all funds raised so far will be ring-fenced for future extension of the railway."

 

If only - some of us still haven't had the newsletter yet. Maybe the newsletter ought to be transmitted to members online, after all Royal Mail is pricing itself out of the market with its postage-hikes. (or is it the Post Office ? - I get confused as to who does what)

 

There is a grey area arising about this already due to the specific nature of the appeal suggesting that this could be a restricted fund

 

Or maybe loaded on the members only pages. I suspect that these are not being updated due to the implemention of the new website.

 

From involvement in appeals, the position in situations like this isn't always clear cut, and this situation certainly appears grey. The online appeal wording doesn't have the sort of wording I'd expect, but when I clicked the link from the appeal, it didn't tell me that the donation would be ring-fenced. However, it would at least be arguable that extension to Parracombe is a subset of extension of the railway, and therefore a legitimate usage - the Charities Commission guidance I saw a few years ago suggested a degree of flexibility would be applied .

Ultimately, though, the rights are with donors to request that their donations to a specific appeal are returned rather than repurposed.

 

That might be interesting in terms of precisely what the wording of the appeal was - if donors have specifically given "to extend to Parracombe" then the funds can't automatically be used for any other purpose. The options become offer to return the money; or ask the donor if they would like to transfer their donation into a different ring-fenced fund. If it was raised specifically for one clearly stated purpose, you can't just automatically transfer it to a different purpose without getting an expression of the donor's wishes.

Tom