Lynton and Barnstaple - Operations and Development

Thank you. That raises some very interesting and serious questions about what potential donors were being told

 

It's also significant because the business plan in the prospectus for LBBC is based on the railway extending....

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Although I am a member of the RVR Supporters Association - I have no idea how much was spend in obtaining the TWAO. The Public Inquiry must have cost a lot in legal costs alone.

So I think it was exactly the right decision for L and B to defer the TWAO.

RVR have recently started fencing in Robertsbridge which has caused a flurry of posts from the opposition on Social Media. Opposers don't go away.

 

Opponents don't go away, but that decision about the TWAO still raises important questions about whether the L&BRT ever had a viable plan to capitalise on the planning permission.

 

Perhaps start with the Taw bridge?

 

If only there had been some admission of responsibility, it would be so much easier to swallow.

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Whether or not the CP powers that a TWAO might confer were required or not, delaying the application doesn’t make a lot of sense really as you need the order to open the railway. Also, the opposition to the scheme was known and the CP powers a foreseeable need. The conditions imposed at planning seem to have been a surprise, which I find strange, because the planners normally give prior warning in discussion about what they might be minded to do. I feel that the plan just wasn’t quite up to the challenges it faced.

 

Under the circumstances, it was unavoidable.
However, what I find unforgivable is the lack of honesty from the Trust on this matter. Instead, the outside world was fed a mixture of prevarication and silence. The Red Line amendments were trumpeted as a great success, and an opportunity to progress, whilst those on the board knew full well that there would be no TWAO, and that the applications would wither on the vine, along with the very considerable cost which was spaffed on them.
At best, we were kept in the dark.
At worst, we were outright lied to.
And you can bet it wasn't done out of any sense of "confidentiality" rather it was the shame and embarrassment at their own mess.

 

I don't think it wasn't out shame, it was out of contempt. If there was shame involved, they would've acted totally different than wasting thousands of pounds on an EGM 6 weeks away from the AGM just to oust two members of the board and propose a new M&A.

This AGM is going to be very interesting and pivotal to the railway's future.

 

Thank you- I knew "shame" didn't quite fit the bill!

 

I agree sadly some do not understand the power of Fundraising

 

Dave good points, however anyone who is going to donate money as you yourself will know, they also like to see the books and get a feel of what is going on. The big hitters as you call them, will also insist on a certain amount of financial control of the project. Can you really see that happening in Devon right now?

My point is that a fresh business plan is essential to succeed and if as you have pointed out yourself, the trust were trying to do things they didn't have a clue about and it failed, then surely the first thing most of us would do is to try and bring someone in who knew what they were doing?

No one likes to be called an idiot and also being told you are useless, but I feel we have lost an opportunity to get the paperwork side of this project back on track. No one knows it all and the better man will always realize that there is some one out there than know more about a subject than he does.

Lets hope in this case that some people with the right stuff stand at the AGM. My concern is that what has been going on for some time and is only now coming to light will put those people we so desperately need off from standing. It is such a poison chalice on the trust board right now that no one is going to want to stand.

I know it has been said before, But I still think the trust is trying to do to much by running the whole project when it should leave the commercial and operational side to the CIC.

I think we can mostly agree that this is a mess that needs to be sorted out and not everyone is going to be happy with the outcome.

 

I'm not sure I can see where I have said the Trust were trying to do anything they didn't have a clue about?

I've checked back over my posts a couple of times and cannot see where I have said it.

Perhaps you are selectively reading?

The whole series of events and circumstances has led us to where we are, through various trustee tenures as well as the ones still standing.

To be honest I don't think whoever was in would have been any more or less successful with the planning as most of the problems have been external.

If we had challenged, we would now have an ENPA less likely to be helpful and also a black mark refusal against us.

If we had continued with the TWAO, we would risk a refusal on that too due to not enough trackbed and infrastructure yet in our control to make it good enough to award one, wasting a huge amount of time and effort and making it even harder in the future to obtain. As I have said and will repeat though, that work so far is still invaluable, it's not a loss.

Nothing in the world of planning is ever guaranteed, as Bala found out and costing them a fair bit to resolve.

Anyone who really knows anything about planning should know it's never a case of create an application, submit it, and hey bingo, approval given and all is fine and dandy.

Often the best is to expect a refusal and the need to appeal, but in our case we had an approval with onerous Grampian Conditions attached and our hands were tied severely on any appeal as it was quite clear at the time with the experience elsewhere that any appeal would have failed.

 

I'm always cautious about saying external factors are the cause of a project failure. My sense is that there were surprises, but that the Trust also made it's own luck in it's pursuit. The "red lines" (purely a Trust matter) can't have helped, but the combination of TWAO, red lines, and S.73 complexities together all suggest that it's hard to see how implementation would have proceeded had the Trust not been subject to Grampian conditions.

 

Tbh, with no Grampian conditions and we would be at least to Parracombe by now, and maybe even working our way back the other way from BG with the sheds being built etc. The TWAO work would be progressing, as that will take a fair while to do.

The red lines issue once spotted took very very little to resolve, S73 to amend, sorted in the usual time frame expected. Application was submitted in the May '21, approval given on the 3rd August' 21.

The Grampian Conditions were the biggest spanner in the works all told.

 

And they were entirely foreseeable and should have been planned for.

 

So spotted in early 2021? In which case, what happened in the previous 3 years (especially the 2 years pre-Covid)?

More to the point, that plan is precisely what I'd have expected ENPA and the villagers to have sought to avoid - all the disruption and none of the benefits. Even if Grampian conditions weren't expected, that basic challenge was predictable - doubly so given the strength of opposition from some.

That, however, is history. The important question, bearing that history in mind, is how the Trust can set itself up for success on future extensions - and whether the approach to "option C" is actually likely to deliver.

 

Yes, I remember the term Grampian Conditions being uttered before hand, but they were something you literally just hoped and prayed were not applied, no matter where or who was putting in an application Grampian Conditions were absolutely dreaded right across the nation. They were often used onerously by authorities and it was well known once applied you couldn't do much about it.

Hence the govt brought in the changes in Oct 2018 to address that issue.

 

Absolutely, we need a bit of mixing, but also retain that knowledge and experience from the past, and in the next few years we will naturally see a gradual change to carry this all forward keeping and using the wealth of knowledge from the past, both good and bad.

 

I don't actually think the Grampian Conditions were forseeable. Planning consents always have conditions but I don't think the more onerous ones were forseeable. To plan for unexpected conditions would require clairvoyance.