City Farm riding arena (in the park)

[Joe K]

Sorry, Kay, should have replied sooner, just a bit busy with stuff.

When I was secretary, taking minutes, nothing about a riding school at the city farm was raised at meetings. Just possibly, trips to [Hartpury?] agricultural college, for kids to ride ponies there.

After I got the shove, totally in contravention of p'ship rules, anything could have happened, but I managed to get minutes for a lot of following meetings, when they started up again. If Imran Atcha wants to claim the plans were discussed, he should cite the date and location of the discussion, so that the minutes, if I don't already have them, can be acquired. I'm sceptical, of course.

[Deleted]

I assume that these 'consultations' would have had to have taken place in 2010 or the first half of 2011. It was clearly all done and dusted by the summer of 2011 - I see that now. Of course, more 'consultations' could have taken place later, but the decision to lease the extra land to Gymnasian so that they could build their manege was taken by the city council much earlier - probably in 2010. I'm now going to trawl through committee minutes to see if I can find the evidence of when the decision was taken.

By the way, I've had a clarification of land ownership from the city council. They do actually own areas of land around St. James' Park that are also considered to be highways. Highway rights take priority over freehold or leasehold title.

[Deleted]

I've now worked out what happened. On 27th October 2010, the cabinet agreed to lease the city farm to Gymnasian UK Limited at a peppercorn rent. It also agreed that "authority to agree the terms of the lease is delegated to the Corporate Director of Regeneration". That would have been Phil Staddon. Now he's been given a huge payoff and is untouchable.

[Joe K]

Why do I get the feeling this is connected to Staddon's 'nepotism', and the employment of Ismael Rhyman (who lives on the same road as many of the Gymnasian staff) by Gloucester City Council at a time when they had started to lay off employees?

[Deleted]

Well, Staddon isn't related to any of the other participants in this drama, is he? No, I get the feeling that he was just an unscrupulous man who got paid shedloads of money to do the bidding of the city council cabinet. Then he got a huge payoff to go away and do other things. Have you noticed that he's now running PJS Development Solutions? He has a Twitter account as well. From that, I now know that he is friends with Eddie Eldridge and the Canal Trust and involved with the Trust that is to take over Llanthony Priory. It just gets worse and worse.

[Deleted]

OMG, he has a website www.philipstaddon.co.uk with articles going back to 2006. But nothing about the illegal selloff of part of St. James' Park, strangely enough.

[Deleted]

The city council's website has changed since yesterday. The planning portal in particular has a different layout. There's still nothing about the surface specifications, though, and my previous emails on the subject have not been added to the comments, nor have I received an reply by email.

[Joe K]

No new documents, but my comment, dated five days after the 'deadline', has appeared...

[Deleted]

The website was playing up again. It gave me the list of documents for the Linden development in Brunswick Road the first time that I asked for the riding arena document list.

I see that two new documents have been added. One looks irrelevant, but has the wrong date on it. The other is the specification for the riding arena surface, contained in a letter from the manufacturers, and is dated 10th July, making it look as if it has been on the website for nearly three months, instead of just today!

[Joe K]

Yes, it's not working for me again, now. Another trip to the offices beckons, where maybe they'll let me use their computers...

[Deleted]

You're right, it's not working for me either. What is the matter with their website? It seems to go faulty every weekend, and often during the week as well.

[Joe K]

It wouldn't surprise me if it suited them to have a slightly wonky website (not like the council has a 'Have Your Say' page anymore, so we can complain publicly).

Or they may genuinely be so strapped for cash that the 'IT Crowd' are on part-time (that 'zero hours' thing?) and only called in occasionally to fix problems.

Which makes it all the more important that they have documents available in actual paper form...

[Joe K]

Just submitted:

The city council has now finally added the 'Riding Area Adjustments plan' to the documents, though it's listed as just 'Riding Area Adjustments'. It's also dated 19/08/2013, even though it was just added this weekend. Is this an attempt to avoid putting back the consultation period a further 21 days, even though two comments have already appeared after the 25th?

[Deleted]

That's the plan that was superseded by the two Riding Arena documents. It was added on Friday.

There is now a warning on the planning website that it may be unavailable from 7th to 10th for sortware upgrades.

[Joe K]

Then they stll have to explain why the 'new' adjustments document is almost completely blank.

I went to the TETRA meeting, and saw the minutes for September 9th. Imran Atcha was there, and apparently tried very hard to persuade everyone present that the plan was known to all from the beginning. Hard evidence may be a different matter. I'll post the relevant minutes, for what they're worth, later.