Oxford City Council Lib Dem Group Meeting

We had a good discussion about Temple Cowley Pools at the group meeting tonight.  Group meetings are confidential discussions but I am happy to report, with permission, that as a new member I discovered that the group view is that we will support keeping the current pools open unless evidence arises that it is a threat to health and/or safety of the public. We will not support the construction of a competition pool on any site at this time.

A walk around the ward with PC Paul Phillips

I met with PC Paul Phillips today and we had a walk around Carfax Ward.  Paul's been policing this area for 8 years now and clearly knows lots of people and is generally accepted and liked in the neighbourhood.

We talked about issues which include homelessness, drug dealing and binge drinking.  It was good to see Paul being firm but fair and polite with people being antisocial in the streets and we came across a couple of worries.  These were the £2 per pint of Stella all day at one pub and the complete blocking of the fire exit of another by a parked car - despite the sign!

Student Safety issues and OUSU Sabs handover

A useful meeting in the town hall this morning to meet the two new OUSU Sabbatical Officers.  Daniel Lowe is the new VP for Charities and Community and we also met the new VP for Women but I'm afraid I missed her name.  I'll update this when I get it.

World Forum on Enterprise and the Environment

I was invited to the launch this event, run by the Smith School of Economy and the Environment at the Oxford Union Society. President Mikhail Gorbachev (Former President of the Soviet Union and Founding President of Green Cross International) was the main speaker and Janez Potočnik (European Commissioner for Environment) also spoke on Climate Negotiations: six months on from Copenhagen.

Gorbachev spoke in Russian and his interpreter spoke at the same time in English.  I'm afraid it was pretty hard to hear what either was saying.

New Councillors Info

I just received this from media and communications.  Good to see they are introducing us to council staff.



I was intrigued to read that the new Green member for St. Mary's appears to see students as a "danger" to East Oxford.  Personally I see students as a positive benefit that adds greatly to the vibrancy, vitality, and viability of the area.  Sure - there are problems with HMOs and Cars but students themselves are not the problem.  Oxford would be a much poorer place without its two world-class Universities and their students.  In fact without them hardly anybody would have even heard of Oxford!  It certainly would not be the great tourist centre it is.

Code of Conduct Training

Almost like a full council meeting with lots of councillors in the room. I guess this is because we get 15% deducted from our allowance if we don't attend these sessions!

We learned about the Council's internal process for dealing with complaints against councillors.  The new legislation means that since May 2008 complaints have to be made to the Standards Committee of the local council. Complaint are then assessed and the choices for courses of action are to take no further action (if the complaint is not covered by the code of conduct), refer to the monitoring officer for investigation, refer to Standards for England for investigation (only in serious or complex cases where it would be inappropriate to investigate internally), or to take other action such as ordering mediation.  Standards for England is however to be abolished by the new government.

An alternative survey on Temple Cowley Pools

The Save Temple Cowley Pools group are an enterprising lot!  They have produced their own survey which I hope you'll take a few minutes to fill in.  The picture here shows me campaigning with some local children back in 2006.  The boy on my right in the picture is now 6'5" tall!

Please do fill in the survey. You can contact them at savetcp@gmail.com

My thoughts on the threat to Temple Cowley Pools

Another week of lots of emails from residents, this time upset about the proposed closure of Temple Cowley Pools.  And quite rightly so too.   I have been campaigning against its closure since 2006 and got a lot of signatures on my petition on 2009 when I was standing for the East Oxford Division county seat with Ben Armstrong.

Temple Cowley area has had masses of new residential development in the last 10 years and as such a good local facility like Temple Cowley Pools is absolutely vital. Putting it in Blackbird Leys just will not work as many people don't have access to cars and even if they do we already have a bad traffic problem in Cowley on Oxford Road and Cowley Road. The current site is safe for hundreds of families and children (many of whom are social tenants and living in relative poverty) to get to either on foot or by bike.  I personally have enjoyed being a user of Temple Cowley Pools since 1989 when I first arrived in Oxford.

I don't object to replacing Temple Cowley Pools with a new facility but am very clear that it MUST be within 1/4 mile of the existing site if it is to continue to provide essential services for the local community.  The site of the current post office sorting office on the corner of Hollow Way and Garsington Road springs to mind.  But I don't really see what's wrong with the current site.  Closing yet another local facility off Temple Road and building YET MORE housing surely can't be a good thing.   Temple Cowley Pools are also extremely close to many bus routes and so easy to get to for thousands of Oxford residents.

The real problem is the council's continued lack of investment and neglect of Temple Cowley Pools.  The consultation they are doing is also an utter farce.  The questionnaire is extremely loaded and lots of people have complained to me about that too.  The consultation is a farce in my opinion.

I am appalled at what the ruling group of the City Council is doing and even more appalled at the apparent silence from the two ward councillors, both Labour members, in Cowley Marsh.  Neither of them lives near Temple Cowley Pools as their addresses (Malik and Abbasi) on the Council website will show.

Licensing Training

This was a long but useful session.  It was introduced by Tony Payne, Support Development and Licensing Team manager, and we were given lots of useful information about the structure of the licensing committees and subcommittees in the Council.

There are two main committees:  The Licensing and Gambling Acts Committee deals with alcohol, entertainment and late food licensing as well as gambling establishments.

The General Purposes Licensing Committee deals with street trading; hackney carriage and private hire and sex establishment licensing (table dancing, pole dancing, lap dancing etc.).  There are also several subcommittees.

Julian Allison is the licensing team leader and told us lots about how the 2003 act works and is based around the Council's licensing policy that it is legally require to have and regularly review.  We learned about personal licences and premises licences.

Finally, two of the City council's solicitors, Daniel Smith and Jeremy Franklin, explained to us how licensing hearings work.  A very interesting and useful session.  You may be interested to know that you can check current licensing applications online.

City Centre Neighbourhood Action Group

This is somewhat of a gathering of the great and the good but useful nonetheless.  It is a Thames Valley Police initiative and includes councillors, council officers (including Ben Smith, Neighbourhood Policing Coordinator Community Housing & Community Development; Karen Crossan, Nightsafe Manager; Julian Allison from licensing; and Linda Jones, Estate Manager for Tenancy Services for Central Oxford), and several from Thames Valley Police.   Representatives from OUSU also attended.



We discussed the City Cente Situational Report which shows that most crime in the City Centre has reduced rather pleasingly.  Graffit was a bit on the rise and this would be looked at.

The OUSU reps, Eorann Lean and Kat Wall, also presented an excellent report about Student night-time safety which highlighted a few areas of concern that Thames Valley Police agreed to work on.  According to the survey, which was responded to by 148 students, the current challenges are as follows:

• 41.6% leave clubs and pubs alone more often than not


• 43.5% walk alone in the city centre at night more often than not


• 38.9% walk beyond the immediate city centre at night


• 48.4% never call a friend if they realise they will be walking alone in the dark


• 33.3% sometimes feel threatened, 7.1% most times feel threatened (although 49.2% say they rarely feel threatened when out at night)


• 7.9% sometimes have been threatened when out at night/54% never been threatened or harassed when out at night/37.3% rarely

Central South and West Area Committee

Another area committee meeting tonight.  I can't believe it has been a month since the last one!  We met at St. Barnabas' School in Jericho at 5.30pm.  As the committee is 4 Labour and 4 Lib Dems we voted Oscar and Mark as co-chairs and Susanna and Nathan as co-vice chairs.  So now half the committee is either chair or vice chair :-)



We had an address from John Power about antisocial behaviour at Tumbling Bay, particularly in the light of last week's fatality there.

Then we had an update from Thames Valley Police's Oxford City Centre Inspector. Matthew Bullivant.  Crime statistics have dropped markedly although there are still a worrying number of thefts from the person.   Matthew was also asked why TVP had not objected to Tescos' application to sell alcohol from 6am at the site of the the old lighting shop on St. Aldates.  He reassured us that he has a robust approach to licencing.



We moved on to planning applications and the one we discussed was an outline application from the Jericho Community Association for a community centre.  There were some difficult issues raised and building the centre will not be without cost to some local trees and the amenity of immediate neighbours, but the permission was unanimously granted nonetheless.  I must say I entered the meeting thinking I may well vote against this but the discussion convinced me that the benefits outweighed the losses and that the chance to provide an important community facility should not be lost.

We agreed to the planning application at the ice rink for a small enclosure for a new chiller without discussion.  This only had to go to committee because it is the City Council applying to itself for planning permission and to do it in a closed office under delegated powers would not be very transparent!

Dave Huddle from Parks then gave us a street scene update.  He promised to look at the litter problems in Jericho and to make sure the bins along the river in Hinksey Park ward were emptied regularly enough during the summer months.

Our final discussion was about the proposed scheme for the licensing of Houses of Multiple Occupation, which is something I am very interested in, living in a very HMO-dense street.  It will be interesting to see how it operates but I'm afraid I can't see the council inspecting an licensing the estimated 5,000 HMOs in the City in much less than a year! I would encourage you to comment during the consultation period (until 21 June) if you have a view.

I was a bit alarmed to discover that HMO licensing appears to be an executive function rather than a council function.  That in my view makes it too political but we'll see how it pans out.

We finished just after 8pm.

Community up in arms about proposed use of Manzil Park as builders yard

I've had nearly 20 emails from East Oxford residents today voicing great concern about the proposal to hand some of Manzil Park over to builders as a yard for 2 years while doing a building project.  I too am rather concerned about this.  My reply to people is:

"I entirely agree that turning a large part of Manzil Park into a builders yard for such a period would be hugely detrimental to the local community and the amenity of all local residents, particularly younger children. There must be better local sites to use as a builders' yard. As a resident of East Oxford myself I am extremely concerned about this.

I am unfortunately not part of the City Executive Board or indeed the ruling political group on the City Council so my absolute powers are limited but I will undertake to do all I can to influence those in power to rethink this potentially disastrous proposal."

I've started a MyCouncillor blog

If you were wondering where all the posts about my work as a City Councillor have gone you can now find then on a different blog at http://tonybrett.mycouncillor.org.uk

Social Landlord tenancy and the problems it brings

A small piece of casework today.  A resident of some social housing in Carfax rang to say his area's glass recycling bin is full and that when he rings City Works to arrange a collection he gets told that they need to check if the Registered Social Landlord (OCHA in this case) has paid for the service.  Then nothing happens.



This would not happen if the City Council owned and managed all the council housing in Oxford City.  And to think the Labour Group was trying to hand it all off to registered social landlords not so long ago.  The problem is there is no accountability - at least Council Housing tenants have councillors to hold their landlord to account.

An interesting discussion with Carlyle Group

I had a meeting to discuss the proposals for the area between St. Aldates and Queen Street today and it seems there is a bit of an impasse between the City Council and the Developer over what to do with the site that we know as St. Aldate's Chambers.   There is a planning application that has been waiting for determination for over a year now and the problem seems to be over a section 106 agreement



I'll write more on this later.