The traffic lights at the junction of King Street and Barnstaple Street are there because of the scaffolding in the road, and could be there for many months to come!

Unfortunately the lights only seem to work intermittently – a very unsafe state of affairs.

The first floor of the building is in a dangerous condition (hence the scaffolding) and until the work is done to make the building safe the scaffolding (and traffic lights) will remain in place.

If anybody knows the owner of the building perhaps they could shame them into doing the work pronto?

Having attended the town/parish council count at the Barnstaple Leisure Centre Sports Hall this afternoon I can now say that I am a South Molton Town Councillor!

Many thanks to all those who voted for me. Thanks too, to all those all who helped me in so many ways: with moral support, advice and encouragement, and in more practical ways such as paper folding and cutting!

Thanks also to the dashing white sergeant for her kindness and TLC!

Especial thanks to my wife, Alison Verney, who’s been a tower of strength and without whom I couldn’t have done this.

I can’t close this post without mentioning Max the dog, who’s companionship and antics give me joy and pleasure along with a certain amount of irritation – I’m still trying to teach him that flower pots aren’t food!

Have Torridge outsourced certain functions elsewhere or have the Journal made a mistake?

Well that’s it for the next four years – apart from the promised EU referendum of course and whatever the SNP have to throw at the rest of the country!

I’m very despondent about the elections. The one minor positive aspect as far as I’m concerned is that Nigel Farage has resigned as leader of UKIP, and UKIP have, thankfully, only got one MP.

We’ve lost an excellent constituency MP and gained someone who has only moved to North Devon in the past few months and is known to have made hugely disparaging comments about rural people.

The Lib Dems were a successful moderating influence on the previous administration and that’s now gone. I don’t understand why the Lib Dems have been punished for doing a good job. Possibly it was the fear engendered by Cameron of might happen if the Conservatives didn’t get in i.e. a Labour SNP alliance.

Now we still have the distinct possibility of the SNP holding the rest of the UK to ransom. Given that they got 56 seats with only a 4.7% share of the total votes cast that is truly bizarre and very unsettling. In fact they won 56 out of the 59 Scottish seats with only a 50% share of the Scottish votes.

To all those people locally who were concerned about issues such as the closure of community hospital beds, the abysmal adult social services, the closure of the Youth Resource Centre etc. All I can say is “you ain’t seen nothing yet”!

As far as localism is concerned forget it. The previous administration made much of their localism policies but in fact major issues were still determined centrally. Issues like planning for example, where the views and wishes of local people now have very little sway indeed.

The Huffington Post has an amusing, if scary, ‘translation’ of Cameron’s victory speech here.

My dislike of the major political parties has only grown. But unlike Russell Brand I don’t advocate not voting. What I do advocate is engaging with the political process. Keep an eye on your MP, check his attendance record, check his voting record and if it displeases you make your views known. Do the same with your local councillors and the District Council.

The good news is that your two re-elected district councillors (John Moore and David Worden) do actually live in the town, do know what the local issues are, do now how local government works, know how to use the system to best advantage and above all they do care about South Molton and its residents.

The two Conservative candidates for the District in contrast, whilst nice well-intentioned people, don’t have a clue how local government works, don’t really know what the local issues in South Molton are, and haven’t shown any sign of being engaged in local issues. Let’s hope they start becoming involved.

BT Openreach are putting in an awful lot of fibre in around South Molton so in the next couple of weeks you’ll see road works along Barnstaple Road, the road between the Bish Mill roundabout and Mole Bridge, along Pathfields, and between Aller Cross and Filleigh.

Another sign that superfast broadband is coming to South Molton is that BT Openreach  will be installing a BT Infinity (i.e. superfast broadband) cabinet near 1 Normandy Way in the next few days. Yet, bizarrely, the Connecting Devon and Somerset website shows the area around Oak Meadow that’s right next to Normandy Way as still being under evaluation!

I just hope that I’ll eventually get it! Mind you, a few weeks ago the Connecting Devon and Somerset website showed my postcode, EX36 4BB, as getting superfast broadband in October 2015. I’ve just looked at the site and the date has slipped to January 2016 so I’m not holding my breath.

The planning application for the new South Molton Community College can now be seen on the NDDC planning web site here.

Be aware that the planning website can be very slow indeed and that the relevant documents haven’t yet been uploaded!

In his election piece in South Molton News David Worden (Liberal Democrat) says this:

“I . . . worked to get NDC to put £400,000 in this year’s budget to resurface and extend the car park and remove redundant buildings”.

Yes, NDDC would appear to have allocated £400,000 to works in and around the central car park area, but in essence nothing has happened in four years – hardly a ringing endorsement.

The reality is this:

1. Car Park Extension in Sheep Pen Area Behind Amory Centre. The NDDC business case, written in November 2011, contained the following timescale:
• Release funds – April 2012
• Confirm scheme design – May 2012
• Planning application – May 2012
• Tender – July 2012
• Start on site – August 2012
• Completion – September 2012

Total cost for this project (including demolition of sheds) was put at £130,000.  The 2014/15 NDDC capital budget had £30,000 allocated for this work and the 2015/16 budget has £96,126 allocated – a total of £126,126.

We’re now in May 2015 and work hasn’t even started!

2. Demolition of Buildings behind Pannier Market (the old Phoenix Recycling). The business case was written in November 2011 and contained the following timescale:
• Release funds – April 2012
• Confirm scheme design – May 2012
• Tender – July 2012
• Start on site – August 2012
• Completion – September 2012

Total cost for this project was estimated at £75,000.

As of today the only sign of activity is that a planning application for prior approval of demolition has been submitted and approved.

3. South Molton Central Car Park
The business case was written in November 2014 and the total cost was estimated at £200,000.

The timescale quoted was:
• Funding approved – January 2015
• Drawings and tender – May 2015
• Construction – June 2015

Worryingly the report suggests that car parking charges will be increased once the project has been completed!

Michael Buckingham (Conservative candidate for the District Council), has this to say in the latest edition of South Molton News:

“My council tax in London, in the Conservative led borough of Wandsworth, was half what I pay in North Devon.”

That may well be the case, and there are very many reasons why Wandsworth’s council tax is so low, but the interesting point – which Michael doesn’t mention – is that the bulk of council tax in North Devon goes to the Conservative controlled County Council.

Of the £1,668.62 Band D tax bill for a South Molton resident the  county council takes  70% and the Conservative Police and Crime Commissioner takes 10%. The LibDem/Independent led District Council take only 10%, with the remainder going to the Conservative controlled Devon and Somerset Fire Authority and SMTC.

The District Council didn’t increase their council tax bill this year. The SMTC bill went down and the other three authorities increased rates by 1.99%. So the only increases came from Conservative controlled authorities!

Interestingly Wandsworth Council think that in order to balance the books their Band D council tax bill will have to increase by a whopping 40% in 2016/17 with a further increase of 20% the following year. That will mean that between 2015/16 and 2017/18 the Wandsworth Band D bill will have increased by an extraordinary 68%!

That’s not all. The Wandsworth bill includes money payable to the Greater London Authority (the GLA) and the GLA charge will go down. This means that the amount that Wandsworth itself levies will go up by a massive 75% in 2016/17 and a further for 28% in 2017/18 – a total of 124%!

I wonder how they’ll cope given that under current legislation any increase of more than 2% requires a referendum of the council’s electors?

I’ve just had a call from somebody called Lauren calling on behalf of the Conservatives. She asked for me by name.

What I’d like to know is how they got my name and number. The number they rang isn’t the one on my election literature, neither is it the one on my web site, nor am I in the phone directory, and I’ve never given them my phone number (or anything else!).

So how did they get it?