Cllr Richard Clifton, Conservative, Rutland County Council, Rutland Times Letter

Cllr Richard Clifton, Conservative, Rutland County Council, Rutland Times Letter

Cllr Richard Clifton, Proposed Permanent Travellers and Gypsies Site Principal, Letter

Mr Richard Clifton
1, Well Street
Oakham Langham
Rutland

14  May 2013 Reference :2013I0296 - Proposed Permanent Travellers and Gypsies Site Principal Planning Officer Mr N Hodgett.

Dear Mr Hodgett,

Thank you for your letter of 3rd May 2013 concerning my application for a Proposed Permanent Travellers and Gypsies Site on the former Ashwell Prison Site. Supporting information, some of which you request, has earlier been supplied with the completed application forms, as Justification Design and Access Statement. Papers were delivered together, by hand to Catrnose.

To address the points in your letter:

1 The application is for a Permanent Travellers and Gypsies Site in Rutland,which has not been available previously for Travellers and Gypsies.

The land is a brown field site and is now owned by Rutland County Council, following the recently purchase, as part of a larger 25 acre site from the Ministry of Justice.

2 Currently, without such a site, and proper provision, Travellers and Gypsies are not properly served by Rutland County Council. Without such provision,Travellers and Gypsies may breach planning regulations and few anywhere within the County in order to fulfil their living requirements and possibly their human rights.

3 This is a Generic application, which should have been fulfilled in earlier years,and for a variety of reasons has not been addressed by Rutland County Council since its separation from Leicestershire previously.

4 As the owner of the land under this proposal is now Rutland County Council,and that the land has only recently come into the County‘s ownership, this land is now available and unused, part of a larger brown-field site. It has been formerly a large football pitch which has been cited publicly by Councillor King as being not usable for football now, and that it falls outside the consented industrial scheme. It would be perverse to consider that Rutland County Council, with this new site ownership not earmarked for use, and with a long period of having no Traveller policy or arrangements in place, would now choose not to be a “willing landowner”.

Page 2

Travellers and Gypsies in Rutland in earlier times sadly have had to settle their own needs themselves, at apparently great cost, without any assistance from the County Council. In so doing they have broken the Planning regulations and law. I am aware of Policy 0812 of the Core Strategy.

The Design and Access Statement of my application is framed on this Policy and other recent Government guidelines. l refer you again to this accompanying document. I believe the proposed site well suitsthe criteria outlined in 0812. Firstly and foremost Rutland County Council now own an available and affordablebrown-field site. Under the circumstances it would be expected that the council would be a willing landlord, for reasons given above, as will as no longer wishing to continue to expose Rutland County to the pressures of unlawful use of green field sites in the future. The proposed Ashwell site development would allow Travellers and Gypsies to be situated within a community, and also in a countryside location within a brownfield site, thus following the Government directive of not placing permanent Travellers and Gypsy sites in open countryside.

This proposal respects and does not dominate the next nearest settled community, Ashwell Village, some considerable distance away, totally out of sighted distance. The proposal also allows for integration and not isolation in the location provided. The proposed site will allow close proximity and accessibility to the facilities that areusually needed when Travellers and Gypsies seek a fixed location, usually during the winter period, i.e. schools, medical facilities and animal care. These needs are cited under Policy Matters in the Design and Access Statement in the papers presented with the application. Appropriate water and drainage facilities are already within the larger Ashwell site,and can be perceived as being able to be resourced appropriately within theproposal site, for as many pitches as the site may hold on a pod basis. i believe that this site by its very situation may be well planned, positioned, andresourced within an affordable budget. The only major outlay might come from soft landscaping and screening for privacy in such a way as to positively enhance the landscape, and also provide possible open safe play areas for children. This is a golden opportunity for Rutland County Council with the ownership of the land currently available, to respond to and support Travellers and Gypsies needs securely within the Rutland and Government Frameworks and within the Rutland wider Community

Yours sincerely Richard Clifton

Cllr Richard Clifton, Conservative Rutland County Councillor, Shaw Trust, The Work Programme. Clifton Tea Room

Cllr Richard Clifton, Conservative Rutland County Councillor, Shaw Trust, The Work Programme.



Cllr Clifton's Linkedin Profile is a little incomplete


CDG merged with Shaw Trust  ran Work Programme schemes in the London boroughs of Hackney, Stratford and Tower Hamlets. It said the number of referrals to Barking and Dagenham in the first part of the financial year 2012/13 were "a third lower than expected and unlikely to increase", although it also declined to give any numbers.

"This will be a seamless change for Work Programme customers, employers and local stakeholders, and they will enjoy the same excellent service, support and partnership working from CDG as they did from Tomorrow’s People," said Richard Clifton, business development director at CDG.

Tomorrows People was directly linked to the Jubilee Stewards scandal so it would appear
Cllr Clifton may have a poor understanding of what excellent service is.

Cllr Clifton has spent his entire career in the employment services sector

In the past he worked for:

Sencia Limited Provider in the London area rated quite low by Ofsted

3 adequate

Low rate of progression into jobs by participants
Insufficiently thorough target-setting with participants
Insufficient work placements for participants

He also worked for

Fern Training & Development. 

A Derbyshire Company and Leicestershire New Deal Provider
this organisation was a little better

The Adult Learning Inspectorate  rated it 2

inadequate planning and monitoring of progression for some participants

insufficient development of literacy, numeracy and language skills with some
participants


W2W Solutions 

was  business consultancy firm registered at his mothers home Mrs P Clifton
Rutland Conservative Chair Woman.


Institute for Public Policy Research Mr Clifton has often spoke at conferences
for most parties, more often at Conservative Party Conferences.

Gateway Housing Board Member


Cllr Clifton is currently resurrecting a old family business a tea room in Mill Street
Oakham.



twitter.com/cliftonstearoom

www.facebook.com/cliftonstearoom



Correspondence From  W2W Solutions.

To: martinjbrookes@outlook.com

Dear Martin

I'm writing to you about your blogspot page and requesting whether you can make a minor change to the content regarding my company, W2W Solutions.

I periodically search for my company online to see what google results come up to try and keep my business details as "clean" as possible.  Your page (below) came up on this search.

http://martinbrookes.blogspot.co.uk/2014/10/cllr-richard-clifton-conservative_17.html

While Richard worked with me for 2 years he left the business in 2009 - I'm pleased to say that since then I've run the business single-handedly from Norfolk and have done so very successfully.  The blog entry suggests that this was Richard's firm and is no longer running, which isn't the case. 

Having rented a room in Oakham for admin/post and paid business rates, it wasn't at Mrs Clifton's home. Also any reference to 'Conservative' that closely to my business name is deeply disturbing - a subject Richard and I would never agree on even if hell froze over.

Is it possible to make a change to your blog to reflect that the business (a quality/business improvement service) is still running successfully and remove the details of the firm being registered at Mrs's Clifton's home? I fully appreciate this request is unlikely to be a priority and you may be unable to change the entry retrospectively, but I thought it was worth a quick email so that I can preserve my business reputation as far as possible!

Many thanks in advance for your time.  

Best wishes.

Stephanie Barlow
W2W Solutions

PO Box 317, Gt Yarmouth, Norfolk, NR30 9EQ
T: 01493 488309
www.w2wsolutions.co.uk

 

Cllr Richard Clifton, Conservative, Rutland County Councillor, New Tea Room, Oakham, Rates Caffe Nero Oakham, Rude & Poor Coffee

Cllr Richard Clifton, Conservative, Rutland County Councillor, New Tea Room, Oakham, Rates Caffe Nero Oakham, Rude & Poor Coffee



Lets hope when Cllr Clifton open's his tea room in Mill Street,
Oakham the standards are higher than that he expects from his
competitors.



Cllr Clifton also well know for wasting public money after
he led a small group of residents in Langham, who put in
a pointless planning application to allow travellers from
the village to move onto a sports field at the former Ashwell
Prison, Even though the travellers were not considering moving.