Lynton and Barnstaple - Operations and Development

Where these they?

https://www.lynton-rail.org.uk/story/lb-public-consultation-documents

There was a recent technical issue with the archive site. Although supposedly now resolved, this may still give a few image issues, but persevere with it...

 

Thanks for that Mr. Admin

 

Talk is cheap. Sadly, deviations are far from it. Wistlandpound is unavoidable, Parracombe Bank hasn't been given much consideration as yet, and the other two you mentioned aren't under any official consideration.

As for Blackmoor, there are two main reasons:
1) The road height and junction layout, as well as road access to the station has changed considerably since 1935, so reinstating the original road bridge is not possible. An alternative alignment for a tunnel (now perhaps two bridges) slightly to the West with pedestrian footpath, IIRC) was approved.

2) OSHI is built across the tracked and both platforms of the original station. To reinstate that part of the original formation would involve destroying the pub we have just spent a small (or perhaps a large) fortune to obtain.

 

Firstly, @Flying Phil totally agree on the EA/YVT voting - super easy, and a real model of what can be done with a bit of vision; well done to David Cameron, Mike Buse and all.

On OSHI, I'm not sure I agree. Unless the ultimate plan is to close the pub and restore the railway as it was in 1935 (which would mean knocking down the house which impinges on the trackbed) then the railway doesn't actually need the pub/station building at all, which is why the railway is projected to run west of the pub in the garden. Whilst the pub is certainly a nice to have, as @RailWest notes, it is not essential at this point unlike the trackbed further up the line.

As a 'nice to have' it is essential that you don't overpay for it - eBay continuously shows that you can get someone to overpay for virtually anything - which by all accounts is precisely what LBBC - and therefore the Trust- have done. Honestly, it would have been a darn sight cheaper to offer £250,000 for the land - itself massively over the odds - rather than what has apparently been done to acquire a non-essential business.

Despite @Thomas Woods views, I don't deal in conspiracy theories. What I would observe is that it was "awfully convenient" that OSHI's sale happened after the loss of planning permission inflicted a strategic defeat on the Trust's hopes of extending to, er, OSHI and before what would be a very difficult AGM in May - made more so by Miles and Nicholson's illegal actions in refusing to honour Anne Belsey's valid nomination. It would also be "awfully convenient" to have an NDA that stops anyone talking about the price if you've paid too much for it - though there isn't a price in the Land Registry records that I can see yet. (And frankly with more than half a million of Trust funds at stake, including funds publicly committed to the Return to Parracombe Fund, we shouldn't have to ask - the Trust should be proactively telling us what they've done and why. And the secrecy and lies is inherently suspicious - if you had nothing to hide, etc....)

The best explanation of what has happened is that the Trust leadership knew that there was a good chance that the s73 application would fail and they were desperate for a good news story to cover for their strategic failure, knowing that it would be more than five years to get through a new planning round and a TWAO with the CP powers required to get the trackbed in Parracombe. Faced with this really embarassing situation, the Trust leadership were desperate, and the Shepherds clearly knew this, and drove a very hard bargain (fair enough). Panicking, Miles and Cowling needed some more cash - so they used the £450,000 in legacies which were (and remain) publicly committed to the RtPF to make up the shortfall. The result is that LBBC paid far too much when they should've walked away, and we are now unable to afford to rebuild Bridge 65 even if planning permission were granted tomorrow. To cover this up, Miles and Co continue to falsely claim that there is £700,000 for the Return to Parracombe Fund.

These things are explicable even if they're not very palatable; it's called accountability.

What is a resigning matter is that they've Miles and Company have lied about the funding since the launch of t. And if they're lying about this, what else are they not being straight about?

 

thanks for that Martyn but their not the drawings i was thinking of, 2015 on the archive site is missing still

 

I have no reason to apologise, it was not the numbers I was querying. Obviously they are in the public domain and it would be incredibly stupid to question them. It's the conclusions that Tobbes (and others) have managed to come to as a result of these numbers. On an aside, one of your main points of contention seems to be that the trust didn't apply for cp powers/twao, when those duties were supposed to fall to Chris Duffel? And I believe I am correct in saying that (eventually) all of the Grampian conditions were met bar one, that being the money side of things. This is also one of the main reasons they are "rushing in" and pushing for cricket field lane, as the various applications for the Grampian conditions are still valid/in date.

*Should've clarified that as one of Tobbes' main points of contention in his self assessed Q&A to the trustees.

 

Excuse my poor effort of editing but the pink line is roughly where the original line went

 

Sadly @Thomas Woods appears to have condemned himself by his own words as not understanding about the Grampian Conditions. Not only did the Trust not have all the money, it did not - and still does not - own all the land needed for Phase 2A. Why does he think there has been so much discussion about the problems caused by the non-ownership of the Grob land at Parracombe? Not just as 'something to chat about', I can assure him! Or has he not been paying attention in class......

As for the assertion "....as the various applications for the Grampian conditions are still valid/in date...." - words fail me (almost). The ENPA planning consents for Phase 2A have expired - period. And who applies for Grampian conditions anyway ????

As regards the TWAO and Chris Duffel, CD made it quite clear that he (and others) spent a great deal of time and effort on this, but gave up through lack of effort and interest from the other Trustees, so why appear to blame him? Even he had finished it and it was 'oven ready' to go, I doubt that he would have been given the authority to submit it without prior scrutiny by, and approval of, the Board. So had the Board been pounding on his door asking why it is not ready? - NO. So it is not surprising that others conclude that the Board really had not thought the whole process through and/or were indifferent to the implications of not having one.

 

well i was led to believe by another trustee that when they had to resort to the S73 to try and salvage something of the mess they made and im pretty sure that same trustee said as much at one of the AGM's that returning to Parracombe wouldn't require a TWAO so thats why work on it was pulled

 

Good that you acknowledge that 'the numbers' are indeed the 'hard facts' which you seek. If you believe that the interpretation of said numbers is incorrect, perhaps you could set out the correct version, with reasoning. Simply gainsaying is not a credible argument.

On the TWAO, Chris has been clear that he paused it due to lack of support, in particular the absence of a robust funding plan - your 'money side of things'. The absence of subsequent action lends credence to the notion that the essential TWAO was not prioritised.

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The documents written and submitted to appease the gramain conditions are still within date as for the information contained within them, and as such could be re-submitted to satisfy new conditions if and when the time arrose..... please don't treat me like a 2 year old.

 

I'm not sure I understand that statement. AIUI, you can't provide documentary "appeasement" of a Grampian condition. The conditions required that the Trust held all the land holdings needed and had the necessary funding before starting construction - you either own that land and have the money or you don't.

Tom

 

I think young Thomas you may be getting your Grampian conditions and Planning conditions mixed up

 

I am quite ok in admitting that I may have been wrong in this situation, gramain conditions or planning conditions, my point is the same. That the documents provided for whichever one is the correct one are still "in-date" and useable. Hence the trusts excuse for "forging ahead" with the cricket field lane proposal.

 

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law...w of holes or,stop making the situation worse.

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Again, I don't get the point you are making. The Trust obtained planning permission, but that permission came with conditions, and a time limit to meet those conditions. The Trust wasn't able to meet the conditions before the time limit expired, and therefore couldn't make use of the planning permission. End of story.

Anything now will require starting the process of planning permission all over again: some of the basic documentation and design work may be useable a second time (since you would essentially be applying for a similar objective) but that doesn't mean they are "in date", which is essentially a meaningless concept in this context. The Trust had planning permission to extend the railway, and now they don't.

Tom

 

Yes, ok maybe I didn't put enough context into what I was trying to say, which is essentially what you have put here. Ofc the trust now does not have planning permission, but if they go forward with the CFL idea they can reuse an amount of the documentation produced for the previous application(s).

 

The L&B had several planning applications that were approved for a finite time, and had several (Grampian) conditions applied to them. Those were not met in time (and probably never could have been), so the planning approvals lapsed.
Some of the documentation previously presented for the applications may be suitable for any new applications, but they will not guarantee approval - the world has moved on a great deal since - and even if they are, different, more onerous conditions may be applied.

We are where we are, but somebody famous once said that 'repeating the same action over and over but expecting a different result is a definition of madness', so maybe a new approach is in order.

 

I totally agree with what you've said here, I suppose the idea they're going for is that with these previously organised documents and revised scope, the new application may be easier/quicker to apply for? If that is the case then personally I think it's worth a try.

 

Maybe. But that relies on an engineering view, not a political one. And it will be the (“small p”) politics that will make the difference between success and failure, around a village in which opinions have been inflamed.


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