Devonshire Flavour - Eating Out Eating Local
Devon County Council is renowned for management secrecy, incompetence and a culture of fear. The official named in this article, Ian Hutchcroft, is a rising star in the Chief Executive's Directorate having been responsible for several 'green' initiatives. He has been on 'sick leave' for some time, presumably on full pensionable pay - another burden on the Council Tax in Devon?
The article that follows is reproduced by kind permission of Lord Gnome. It first appeared in Private Eye, issue 1139, 19 August - 1 Sept 2005. Devon County Council are being asked to confirm aspects of the story. Painfully slowly, some of the documents may be extracted from them using the FOI. Let us see how long it takes!
Devon County Council have apparently already paid some of Mr Campbell's legal expenses - out of the public purse?
Down on the Farm
No county apart from Cumbria was hit harder by
the 2001 foot-and-mouth disaster than Devon. In August that year, local farmers were still
in shock as they met at the Devon county show, wondering whether their industry could ever
recover.
Among those trying to see a way forward was Kenneth Campbell, whose background in the
hospitality industry had given him an idea for encouraging Devon's restaurants, pubs and
hotels to use local products. When he met Jonathan Smye, an official of Devon county
council's Devon Food Links unit, he learned that the council might be interested in his
"Devonshire Flavour" project. Smye told him the council would support an
application to Defra for funding, so long as Campbell produced a business plan.
By the end of September, he and Smye were setting up presentations to introduce the idea
to farmers and catering businesses. Campbell submitted his application to Defra, and set
about registering Devonshire Flavour as a company and trade name. All seemed set fair.
Now, however, the story became murky. In January 2002, Smye told Campbell that a £50,000
grant had been given to Devonshire Flavour, not by Defra but by the South West Regional
Development Agency (SWRDA). This came as a shock to Campbell. He knew nothing about any
application to the SWRDA. Only gradually did he discover that another council official,
Ian Hutchcroft had used Campbell's business plan and the name Devonshire Flavour to make a
totally separate application for funding. Furthermore, the fact that the SWRDA had given
£50,000 to Devonshire Flavour ruled out any chance of Campbell getting his grant from
Defra.
The story now became murkier still. When the council realised Campbell had registered
Devonshire Flavour as a trade name, it quickly changed the name of its own project to
"Eating Out, Eating Local". Campbell found he had been frozen out altogether,
even though the £50,000 had been awarded to Devonshire Flavour, based on his business
plan. Thus began a Kafkaesque correspondence with the council and the SWRDA which was to
last another three years.
What made this even more mysterious was the way the SWRDA seemed to have become complicit
in this double-dealing. Dr Sue Brownlow, its head of "Devon Operations",
repeatedly insisted that the £50,000 had been awarded to the council's "Eating Out,
Eating Local" project, even though the document which might prove this had somehow
got lost. Only in February 2005 did an application under the freedom of information act
finally unearth the allegedly "lost" document. This showed that both the council
officials and the SWRDA had consistently been lying. The £50,000 had indeed been awarded
to Devonshire Flavour, and for the project proposed by Mr Campbell.
As for what became of the £50,000 of taxpayers' money, an internet search reveals that
the last recorded reference to Eating Out, Eating Local on the council website was in
2003. Apart from paying to keep a few officials busy, its contribution to helping Devon's
farming community recover from foot and mouth appears to have been non-existent.
'Muckspreader'
Staff of Devon County Council who know anything more about this are invited to send me comments and information - but don't do it from your office computer! Your identity will not be revealed (better still, don't tell me anyway!). My email address is 'blocked' by the DCC server and staff who do communicate with me have to use either pigeon post or their home computer.