Central South and West Area Forum: Community-led planning

This meeting was held at St. Barnabas School in Jericho as we rotate around the area.

The main focus of the meeting was a discussion on community-led planning, both in terms of community work and planning in the development control sense.

The Head of City Planning attended and gave a useful overview of the Localism Bill and its provisions for Neighbourhood Plans.  We were referred to a short overview document (PDF) about Neighbourhood Plans too.

A good discussion ensued and I think some of the salient points are:

1. The localism bill seems to be more aimed at rural communities to allow them to plan for and authorise more development so it's not clear how useful it would be in a crowded urban area like Oxford.

2.  Councillors are very tightly bound by planning law and when we are determining applications it does feel more like we are serving those laws than serving the desires of our electorates.  If we refuse things when there is no planning reason we are likely to get the decision overturned by an unelected planning inspector and may get costs awarded against us as a local authority.  That has to be paid out of Oxford taxpayers' money so serves nobody.

I shall keep a close eye on how the Localism Bill develops.

Although the meeting was in Jericho it was a shame very few people from Jericho attended.  I do also question how sensible it is having a meeting in a cold primary school hall, where the chairs are more suitable for 5-11 year olds than adults!

Full Council: 2012-13 Budget and Council tax

This was a long meeting but a pleasantly constructive one.   It's the annual meeting where the budget is proposed by the administration and then the other party groups propose amendments which inevitably fall because the administration has a majority.  But we have to go through the process as it is a good chance for political groups to show their priorities for the City, especially in the run-up to local elections.

As we LibDems are not really a million miles from the Oxford City Administration on lots of issues we take the view that it's better to propose a small-ish number of sensible and properly costed amendments to the administration budget rather than wasting lots of officer time preparing a budget that we know won't get voted through anyway.  I'm pleased to say that our budget amendments were confirmed by the senior financial officer (the Section 151 Officer) as being financially workable and thus legal.   This was not the case for the symbolic mess that the Green Party proposed!  (Yes that is a political comment but this is a political blog!).

Our budget amendments were presented expertly by Cllr Mark Mills, our Deputy Leader, and the headline additions were:  Re-introduce democratic area assemblies; restore a full out-of-hours noise complaint service; 24 hour help service for all tenants (not just those in social housing); double the number of apprenticeships offered by the council; free parking for electric vehicles; and retaining the current Dial a Ride service.  There was more.  These extra costs would be offset by cutting councillor allowances; cut war councillor budgets; and delete proactive river bank work.  The budget was well-received by all present, including some clapping from the public gallery.  The Administration response was gracious and I appreciated that greatly.

There was time for the normal questions to councillors so I made sure I asked some more about the HMO licensing scheme:

My first was about a home with a couple "living together as if spouses or civil partners" and one other person.  The answer seems to imply discrimination against people based on martial status, which I thought was illegal!

My second question was clarifying if where a house, if classified as an HMO because it has 3 or more lodgers with resident landlords, needs to count the landlord(s) in the numbers in the HMO - the answer was yes.  This of course means even more expense for people just letting rooms in their houses to help make ends meet and to provide hugely needed accommodation for many people in our City.

My third was really just an observation that the council lets its own tenants (often vulnerable families with children) live in much worse conditions than it is now allowing private lets of non-vulnerable adults to live in.   The answer seemed vague but I think it was basically because the council has the power with HMOs but not with families - frankly I think that's rubbish as the Administration could do all sorts of improvements to its own housing that it lets to tenants if it chose to.

My final question pointed out the obvious paradox in the City Council at the moment whereby it pays landlords a £600 finders fee plus expenses for landlords with a two-bed house to let but that for a three-bed there are onerous HMO checks and fees of £362 plus £150 per year to pay.  The answer was that there is a shortage of two-bed properties in Oxford.  If the Administration thinks the current HMO scheme is going to do anything at all to improve that situation then frankly I think its members are bonkers!

The pocket park on Middle Fisher Row

I visited this area today on the request of the owner and operator of The Oxford Retreat as he is concerned about antisocial behaviour, drug use and damage to the rear fence of his venue.  I was pleased to have a Street Scene team leader with me to give advice on what might be possible.

The problem is that this little pocket of land, just behind Middle Fisher Row (between Park End Street and Hythe Bridge Street) is very badly lit an so tends to attract all sort of antisocial behaviour.  Drugs paraphernalia, broken glass and all sorts of other rubbish are found there by the street scene team most days.  The area also attracts people urinating or worse in the small hours of the morning as it is so much part of the light night entertainment area of the City.

You can see the damage to the rear fence of the Oxford Retreat in the picture - the apparently happens regularly.  There have been break-ins too.

I think there are lots of angles on this problem - lighting must help so I'll investigate that and it may be that a better fence needs to be erected to protect the fence that is the property of the Oxford Retreat.  I don't want to see the area fenced off but it might make sense to allow some community or commercial use of the area so it's bit less likely to attract problems.  Watch this space!  The first job will be to work out who owns the land.

City Council Management Practice Group

I was invited to this event by the City Council's Head of Law and Governance. He invited several councillors to give perspectives on what our specific roles require from the organisation in order to function optimally. The capacity in which I was invited was as a regulatory chair. I am Chair of Planning Review Committee and vice chair of the Licensing and Gambling Acts 2003 Committee so spoke about both those functions.  Other Councillors speaking were Stephen Brown (Scrutiny Chair), Val Smith (Executive Member), Dick Wolff (New Member).

My 5 minute talk was basically just a run through of all the things City Council Officers do that work well for me in my role.  I'm pleased to be in the position of not really wanting so much else as our Officers already do such a good job.

I said I would write a blog post with my main points so here they are:

1.  Councillors and officers work together but need to remember that we have different roles.  Officers are there to represent the council whereas councillors are there to represent the electorate, including those in their wards who didn't vote or didn't vote for them.  The quasi-judicial nature of regulatory work can be difficult in this context but is not impossible.  Members of the public often believe that councillors have more discretion in licensing and planning matters than we actually do and this expectation needs to be carefully and honestly managed.

2.  Councillors depend on reports from Officers, as professionals in their fields, so we have the right information on which to base our decision.  Reports are most useful when they are concise and balanced.  I think they should present arguments on each side of a decision, weigh them up and them make a recommendation.  They should indicate how strong the case is in the recommended direction and indicate any conditions that might be appropriate to impose to mitigate any negative effects of a decision in either direction.  Reports are for the purpose of informing members, not convincing them, although they will of course have considerable influence on members' decisions.

3. Site visits are extremely useful.  Planning decisions are much better made if Councillors have seen the local context for themselves and I've found it extremely useful when Officers have arranged access to the homes of local residents so we can get a first-hand appreciation of the issues.  Facilitated meetings both with applicants and objectors are also extremely useful and I'm grateful to Council Officers for providing these.  All that Officers can do and provide to help Councillors better understand the context within which they are making regulatory decisions is much appreciated.

4. Councillors are real people so have lives that are tied up in many aspects of Oxford's life as a City.  This can sometimes lead to conflicts of interest when making regulatory decisions.  Oxford has first-rate officers in its legal department and they have always provided excellent legal advice on what Councillors might need to consider when deciding whether or not they have a conflict of interest.  I am clear that it is the Councillors' job to decide if there is a conflict of interest, not the Officers', but also very grateful for the good legal advice that we receive on this.  It's also useful when Officers raise matters with us that we might not have considered - an example of this for me was a few night's board and lodging from a German Councillor in Bonn as part of the town twinning trip last year.  I hadn't considered for one minute that he might make a planning or licensing application in Oxford at some point!

5.  Planning meetings are often contentious as the decisions that are made have direct impact on people's lives and buildings are often in place for 100 years or more.  I like to make sure everyone at the meeting, including the public, is welcomed and knows who everybody around the table is and why they are there.  It's great that we have well-presented Officer reports that use modern technology to make things as clear as possible.  I also find it useful to clarify to everyone present that Officers are professionals and experts in their work whereas councillors are democratically elected amateurs who have the job of making the decision.  Sometimes people can start being nasty to officers if they are making a recommendation that is against what they want and I think it's useful as chair to remind such people that Officers as simply doing their job and giving their professional opinion.  They are not controlling councillors or making the decision so if anyone needs abusing (and actually nobody ever does!) then it should be Councillors, not officers.  I also made the point that if there are difficult issues in a planning application that are related to things that other authorities are responsible for then it's really useful to have those professionals along to the meeting- these can sometimes be from the highways agency or the highway authority (County Council).

6. Licensing hearings are a bit different to planning meetings in that licensing decisions are more reversible as they don't often result in buildings being erected!  I like to run licensing hearings in a conciliatory and constructive way.  While the process inevitably has a winner and a loser I think it's hugely helpful to run it as a conversation and make sure all parties feel they have had their say and been properly listened to.  I am extremely grateful to licensing officers for enabling hearings to happen like this.  Good legal advice is also essential to good licensing decisions and I'm pleased to say we enjoy that both during hearings and during the time when the licensing panel is in private to deliberate and make its decision.

7.  Council officers are hugely important in making sure that everything presented to committees and licensing hearings is properly evidence-based and has a firm audit trail behind it.  So-called evidence that is circumstantial, hearsay or conjecture about what might or might not happen if a particular decision is taken or not taken really is not helpful.  Such pseudo-evidence just confuses the decision and inappropriately raises the expectations of the interested parties about what outcomes might be possible.  We are very fortunate in Oxford to have Officers who are extremely pro-active in ensuring that responsible authorities and interested parties only bring substantial evidence that will stand up properly.

8.  Sometimes Councillors will make a decision that is against Officer advice.  That's right and proper and the way the democratic process works.  Such decisions though will often be the subject of appeals, which if allowed can cost the Council (and hence the taxpayer) a lot of money in legal fees.  it is thus vital that Councillors receive appropriate Officer support when formulating decision notices that are not what Officers advice.  I appreciate that this can be difficult of Officers as Councillors are effectively asking them to justify the position that is opposite to their own.  I am nonetheless impressed that planning and licensing officers are able to do this, in full respect of the democratic process and democratic right of Councillors to disagree with them.  Again, its a piece of Officer support for which I am extremely grateful.

9. Finally, council meetings and hearings would be pointless if they were not clerked and minuted accurately and efficiently.  Oxford has a great Legal and Democratic Services Team and I particularly appreciate the way minutes are always on time, always run past me as chair for checking (and perhaps minor changes) and published promptly.  It's also good to know that some Council Officers read this blog to make sure I'm not saying anything that might bring it into disrepute or cause difficulties that I had not anticipated.

There was not time for any questions but I was pleased to be invited to join the Council's managers for lunch and I had some more interesting discussions with several  I had not met before or did not know other than by email.

A good couple of hours!

Oxford Pride Residents and Neighbours information meeting

I was really pleased to be invited to this event today by the Oxford Pride Organising Committee, mainly because as the ward councillor it's important that I know what's going on in the area so I can make sure residents and neighbours are kept in the loop.  The secondary reason is that I was one of the main organisers of the first ever Oxford Pride back in 2003.  This year is the 10th Oxford Pride and I can't believe how quickly the time has passed.

[caption id="attachment_563" align="alignright" width="300" caption="Viewing the draft plans with Simon House project workers"][/caption]

All neighbours had been leafleted a few weeks ago by the Pride Chair so we were expecting a few to turn up.  Not many did but that might be something to do with the snow that's in Oxford at the moment.  It was great, however that two of the project workers from A2 Dominion's supported housing at Simon House came and spoke to us - they were incredibly supportive of Pride and very happy that it is happening this year in their immediate neighbourhood, Paradise Street and Paradise Square.  We talked about plans for the day and I was impressed at how well Mazz Image (Oxford Pride Festival and Event Coordinator) explained everything and how well organised Pride seems to be.  It's a far cry from those early efforts in 2003!

I hope Oxford Pride this year is a huge success and I'm looking forward to what will be a great day.  It's on 16th June and I'm touched that I've been asked to get as many of the original 2003 organisers together as possible to go at the front of the parade.  What fun!

Partnerships Training

This session was set up for councillors by two officers from Strategic Policy and Partnerships.

I found it useful to have an overview of how the City Council works in partnership with other bodies both at the City and the County level and there was some useful information about changes to partnerships since the change of government in May 2010.  In particular we noted:

•Scrapping of the Local Area Agreement
•Scrapping of the National Indicators
•Removal of statutory duty to develop a Sustainable Community Strategy (and therefore the need for Local Strategic Partnerships)
•Scrapping of regional bodies (SEEDA, GOSE)
•Introduction of Local Enterprise Partnerships
•Changes to the Health and Well Being Board linked to the NHS reforms

The Oxford Strategic Partnership has some new priorities, structure and subgroups also:

You can click the image to get an even bigger version.

I had no idea there were so many bodies involved in the Oxford Strategic Partnership.  They include:  Oxford City Council; Oxfordshire County Council; NHS Oxfordshire; Oxfordshire Community and Voluntary Action; Oxford University; Oxford Brookes University; Oxford and Cherwell Valley College; Thames Valley Police; Oxford Inspires; Critchleys; and Oxford Preservation Trust.

The one suggestion I made was that meetings of all the partnerships, which are public and published should be added to the Council's meetings newsfeed to get the importance of partnership working higher up on the agenda.

Really impressive work from City Council Officers!

If you read this blog lots you'll know that I volunteer as a Street Pastor in Oxford.  Well I was out last Friday evening and had drawn to my attention a dangerous situation in that the railings that are between the river and the side of the steps up from Fisher Row to Hythe Bridge Street don't actually meet the brickwork of the bridge itself.  The photo shows what I mean.  It is taken looking East towards Worcester Street and George Street from just outside the Oxford Retreat.   You can see the gap is big enough for a person to fall through and that apparently had happened to a rather intoxicated young lady earlier in the month.  One of the door supervisors at the Oxford Retreat told me the story of how he had jumped into the river to save the young woman.

I said I would include the dangerous situation in my report of the night.  The report goes to the Street Pastors Coordinator for Oxford and to the Violent Crime & CCTV Manager for the City Council, Karen Crossan.  Karen reported the issue immediately to the relevant people in City Works and I also sent them a request today.  I am incredibly impressed that they took mine and Karen's requests extremely seriously and dealt with them so fast.  The result is that "the handrail will now be extended, a stainless steel section will be welded into place tomorrow morning at 0530".

Fantastic work chaps - huge thanks to Dave Huddle for making this happen in little more than 12 hours from my request!

Licensing Hearing: The new Sainsbury's in Summertown

I chaired this panel hearing today that was necessary because two Summertown residents had sent in a joint letter of objection to the premises licence application. I was joined by Cllrs Mary Clarkson and Mark Lygo.

The application was from Sainsbury's as they are opening a new convenience store in Summertown in March.  They were applying for a license to sell alcohol on an off-sales basis only from 7am-11pm 7 days per week in line with the opening hours of the store itself.  It should be noted that we were simply deciding on the alcohol licence - all the other necessary permissions for the store to operate were already in place.

The objections centred around the risk that children might buy alcohol and the possible need for a security guard.  I put these to the applicants and got a very detailed description of Sainsbury's ways of working, including their think 25 policy, and how in Leeds they have a similar store where problems have been avoided by close working with the Police and the local Community.  Sainsbury's probably would employ a security guard at "sensitive" times but did not want to accept this as a condition.  I must say I was a bit perturbed that the objectors seemed rather to be objecting to a Sainsbury's store rather than the sale of alcohol and indeed that's what their petition said.

After the applicants and objectors had summed up they were dismissed while we made our decision.  We took the view that Sainsbury's had addressed all the concerns so granted the hours as applied for but with a condition that a prominent sign reminding customers that Summertown was an alcohol-free zone must be displayed by all exits.  We also asked for contact details of the manager to be displayed for residents to use in case of problems and reminded Sainsbury's that if there were problems it was open to the responsible authorities and the interested parties to call a licence review in the future.

I felt it was useful for Sainsbury's to be able to hear to concerns of residents and I hope the hearing will be the start of an ongoing dialogue that will enable Sainsbury's and the residents of Summertown to co-exist in common understanding and peace!

Please note this post does not form an official record of proceedings and should not be treated as such.  The decision notice from the City Council is the definitive document.

The remainder of December's full council

This was the rest of the meeting from December 19th. To be honest very little of note happened. There were lots of questions from councillors to other councillors as well as quite a few motions. With majority control of a council I'm afraid the outcomes of these are generally pretty predictable!

The one thing of note that we did was to vote on the 2012-13 council year civic post holders.  I am delighted to say that Cllr Alan Armitage will be the next Lord Mayor of Oxford but rather less delighted that the council has chosen to make an HMO Landlord who was recently bound over for the state of one of his Oxford HMOs into next year's Deputy Lord Mayor.  Cllr Dee Sinclair will be Sheriff.

I did finally get to ask my questions about HMOs but the portfolio holder wasn't present so the leader of the council answered them in his absence. I wasn't impressed! Here they are, and the answers, with my supplementary comments/questions:

Q1: Given that this council's "HMO Amenity and Facilities Good Practice Guidelines" make it clear that one shared bathroom which includes a lavatory is sufficient for up to four people in an HMO can Cllr McManners tell me why, with just two more people a second bathroom (also containing a lavatory) is not deemed sufficient by the administration? Can he tell me how many extra lavatories in the last 12 months this council has forced landlords to have installed in 6-person HMOs that already had two lavatory-containing shared bathrooms?

Response: There are no national standards for facilities and amenities in HMOs and each council must produce its own guidelines. Our standards were developed following consultation with landlords in the city as well as consideration of work carried out by other local authorities. Some of the proposed standards were amended following comments from landlords. We recently compared our standards with those used by 14 other similar cities and concluded that the standards being applied in Oxford are consistent with those being applied elsewhere. The use of an HMO is considered to be very different to a family house occupied by a similar number of people which is why additional standards are required. For example, 6 young professionals living in a house are all likely to be getting ready to go to work at the same time in the morning and so both bathrooms are likely to be in constant use. A separate w.c. is therefore an essential amenity for the other occupiers....

There were only two HMOs licensed in the last 12 months where an additional separate toilet was required to be installed. Both of these properties were occupied by 6 people and had 2 bathrooms.

As far as I'm concerned that still doesn't answer my question.  Why is 1 OK for four if 2 are not OK for 6?  It makes no sense to me.  At least the problem is not as widespread as I'd thought.

Q2: In the last 12 months, how many Oxford homes where an HMO license has been applied (or re-applied) for have passed the inspection without the Council requiring modifications, or additions before the grant of the license? What percentage of total homes inspected in that period does that figure represent?

Response: The records indicate that in the last 12 months only 11 HMOs were inspected that did not require any work before the licence was granted. A total of 454 inspections have been carried out so this represents 2% of the total for the same period.

The answer then goes on in depth about how many landlords have bee prosecuted, entirely missing the point of my question, in that it is about the top end of the market where there are happy tenants and professional landlords.  This is a classic attempt to diver attention from the real issue of the unintended damage the HMO licensing scheme is doing to tenants in high-quality house-shares with professional landlords.   I responded,

"So does this mean that Oxford City Council is saying the vast majority of HMOs in Oxford are unfit for their tenants or does it mean that the standards are set to high and/or being applied too bluntly?"

There was no answer!

A great morning catching up with constituents and a prospective new Carfax councillor

I spent this morning knocking on doors in Carfax, the ward I represent.  I was delighted to be joined by Cllr Stephen Brown, my ward Colleague; Cllr Graham Jones, a Lib Dem Councillor for St. Clements; and Duncan Stott about which more below.  It was great to catch up with people after the Christmas break and hear about various local issues, some of which we have already dealt with.  Carfax is a fascinating ward with a massively diverse group of electors.  I was privileged to talk to The Registrar of Oxford University at his residence this morning and feel equally at home attending the users meeting of O'Hanlon House (also in Carfax Ward) which is a critical service and facility for the homeless on the pathway back into independent housing.

I am delighted to report that following  Stephen's announcement that he's not re-standing for election as a Carfax Ward City Councillor in May, Oxford Lib Dems have chosen Duncan Stott as the next Lib Dem candidate for Carfax ward in May 2012.

Stephen has been a wonderful ward colleague and a really inspirational leader of the Lib Dem group on Oxford City Council.  I'll miss him very much but entirely understand and support his decision to take some time out to spend more time with his family and his grandchildren while they are small.  I know too that Stephen will continue to work as hard as ever for the people of Oxford, particularly in Carfax Ward, until the local elections in May.

Duncan is an incredibly energetic and enthusiastic young man who has been involved in the Lib Dems for some time and has been extremely active both nationally and locally.  He grew up in Oldham and then gained his Masters Degree at the University of York.  He moved to Oxford six years ago and works just outside our City as a Senior Research and Development engineer in a hi-tech company.  He's lived in Oxford City for those six years.  I think the great thing about Duncan is that he has a really good understanding of Oxford City as a non-student resident but also entirely understands what it's like to be a student in a big City.  I am impressed at about how well he keeps both in balance.  I hope you'll agree that he'd make a fantastic LibDem Councillor for Carfax with its 35:65 non-student:student balance and I hope you'll be able to meet him in the coming months.

I'm really enjoying and excited about working with Duncan in the run up to the elections and feel confident that we'll be a great LibDem team for Carfax, being a strong voice for students and everyone else also resident in the ward.

Planning Review Committee

We met today to discuss two planning applications.  There were seven councillors present at the meeting.

The first application was for a development at Cantay House off Park End Street.   The application was actually deferred after a discussion about contributions to social housing in developments of 4-9 units that has just been agreed at full council on 19th December.  You can see the Development Plan Document (DPD).  The whole question really is about how much weight can be given to a policy that was not in place when the application was made, was not in place when it was first determined by the West Area planning committee and is yet to be approved by a planning inspector.   If there is an appeal (on grounds of non-determination) then I imagine we'll see!

The second application was for a change to what many know as the John Allen Centre, whereby B&Q's building will be subdivided at the end of the B&Q lease providing another Sainsbury's supermarket as well as some café/restaurant units and four houses fronting onto Rymers Lane.  The bulk of the discussion was about a developer contribution to improve the lighting of the area on the other side of the retail park to make things safer for people accessing the site from roads such as Maidcroft Road, Cleveland Drive and Havelock Road.  There was also concern about the hours during which the service yard can be used and I hope that proper enforcement of allowed hours will improve matters for some local residents who are being sleep-deprived by some extremely antisocial behaviour by delivery companies.  The application was approved.

Full Council

The last full council of 2011 and a ridiculously full agenda! We met at 5pm and I didn't stop until 10.37pm and even then, had not dealt with the motions on notices, statements and questions.

There were some very important items at this meeting.

The council also considered plans for Barton West and also the latest round of attacks on HMO tenants and landlords.  The use of a house as an HMO (that means 3 or more unrelated people living there) is a different planning use class and Labour has made it a requirement that all changes to use class C4 will require planning permission and that change of use from C3 (family home) to C4 will require planning permission.  Even more worrying is that planning permission will be refused if there are more than 20% of properties in that street already in use as HMOs.  I think that will be catastrophically disastrous for Oxford's housing situation.  We'll see.

I am utterly appalled at some of the judgemental and social-sorting based on tenure language that is being used by this Labour Council.  Try "However, in some areas of the city, high concentrations of HMOs are resulting in changes to the character of the local area, and may also contribute to local parking problems, large numbers of transient households, and the affordability of renting or buying homes in Oxford. This has led some people to believe that their communities are becoming unbalanced, because the number of short‐term tenants with less established community ties has grown too large."

I think that's outrageous and hope that lots of Oxford-dwellers will agree. I see it as nothing more than a direct attack on students, honest landlords and anyone elsewho can't afford to live in Oxford in any other way than in an HMO.

Another thing discussed was the issue of adopting some legislation to allow the licensing of horse-drawn carriages in the City Centre. This was being recommended by the General Purposes Licensing Committee but I am pleased that the Full Council saw that any horse drawn carriages would be inappropriate in such a constrained City as Oxford for reasons both of horse welfare and pedestrian, cyclist safety. I was glad to be one of the 27 that voted against the Licensing Committee's recommendation.  This shocking video from New York is one of the things that convinced me to vote against.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kWhmuUUeZKU&feature=player_embedded

A long and tiring meeting and some really stupid planning decisions rushed through by our current megalomaniac Labour Administration if you ask me!

City Centre Neighbourhood Action Group

These meetings are always useful and I was impressed at the chairing skills of Matt Sulley, the Police Officer who has taken over the running of the group.  We had some useful discussion about what to do about speeding on St. Giles and also about some antisocial behaviour issues in the City Centre.  I commented about how many obscenely drunk people there are in the City Centre in the small hours, particularly at the weekends, and suggested that some venues must be serving people who are too drunk.  I do hope Oxford can try to lead the way on doing something about this as getting that drunk is really not good for the health of anyone involved and I can't really believe it's a good night out either to have to be picked up by by a parent and drive home with your head in a washing up bowl!

The meeting was rather short as we had full council at 5pm.

Union Street Student Accommodation permission granted and subsequent councillor abuse

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

Using far too much paper and resources?

Last Friday I received the agenda for City Executive Board (CEB). It was three volumes totalling 944 pages, double-sided so only 472 pieces of paper. As normal this was delivered to my home by the council courier van (while I was probably at work).   This would be the same for all 48 members of council (some may have elected to have papers delivered elsewhere but all are entitled to a delivery).  That's a staggering 22,656 pieces of paper for one meeting - and that's without the officer copies and the spare ones for the members of the public at the meeting!  At a conservative £5/500 sheets that's approaching £300 just on the paper, without considering the staff time to prepare, print, collate and bind the material as well as the staff time to deliver it to houses and the costs of running the courier's van.

CEB is an important meeting as it has all the executive power of the council so all members of council do need to see the papers but I really don't believe many actually have time to read every sheet of paper in such a huge agenda.  This is 944 pages to read between when I got home on Friday and the CEB meeting the next Wednesday.  That's about 5 full days that already have lots of time committed, not least to my day job!

Yesterday, given that the CEB  meeting is in the past I put my papers in the recycling, as there was nothing confidential, for it to be collected by another part of the council.

Today I received the agenda for full council on 19th December.  It's another 350 or so pages!  I'm seriously considering asking the courier to deliver straight to the recycling centre to cut out the middle man (me!)

Now it's not that I don't want to read these reports but as you can see from the links in this item, they are all available on the City Council's web site. Why not just send councillors the contents pages so we can browse on the web for any reports that we actually need to read thoroughly?

I am pleased that City Council IT is looking into getting councillors to use tablet devices to read papers and it really can't come too quickly as far as I am concerned.  I read almost everything online these days and the council really does make it pretty easy to find stuff:  There is a full public page on Council meetings and there is even an RSS feed for those that prefer to use things like Google Reader.  That feed is also on this blog page.

Nice comments from Oxford University Student Union

Working with and engaging with our Universities, particularly the student body, is always a challenge.  Not because anyone makes it difficult but I think because students come and go so quickly and because the senior people in the Students' unions change every year.  This academic year, Oxford University Student Union (OUSU) is lucky to have Daniel Stone (Dan) as its Vice President (Charities and Community).  He works tirelessly to try to bring Students and City together and it's great as a City Councillor to have a meaningful way to interface with the many students who live in Carfax Ward, the residents of which I represent!

Dan recently published a nice column in the Oxford Student, the official newspaper of OUSU, that couldn't really have been nicer.  You should be able to read it if you click on it here but if not, here's the middle paragraph:

"City Councillors are here to represent students too!  There are City Council wards running through the centre of Oxford and extending out through Jericho, Summertown and over the Magdalen Bridge.  We're lucky to have a fantastic group of Councillors, many of whom were former students and consequently want to engage with the student population as much as possible.  But it's up to us to speak and make our voices heard"

Thanks Dan - it's a pleasure to be able to serve you and the students of Oxford!

Do read the whole article if you can. Click it to enlarge it.

Site Visit for Union Street Planning Application

We visited the site of planning application for some student accommodation in a constrained little site off Union Street in East Oxford, near to East Oxford Primary School and one of its external sports areas.  This application was approved by West Area Planning Committee last month and was call-in to Planning Review Committee.  We should have heard it on 30th November but as that was the day of strikes, I and many other committee members agreed not to cross the picket line and to defer the meeting.  We now re-determine the application on 15th December.

This application is the one that was the subject of the nasty anti-student comments I posted about last month so I thought we ought to have a site visit to try to get a feel for the site and try to understand the position of all people and groups concerned.

I was grateful that two planning officers were able to attend and explain the site to us, with the proper plans.  I attended along with Nuala Young and Mike Rowley so that means at least some of the committee will have first-hand experience of the site.  I'm sure others will know it too as it is currently the site of the "Plebs College" squat so it's been in the news a lot lately.

I shan't comment here on my views on the merits or otherwise of the application as I want to be able to listen carefully to what people say and make an unbiased decision at the meeting on Thursday 15th December.  Click the picture to see a larger version of it.

Lord Mayor's Christmas Reception

This is the annual event held at the Town Hall where councillors all get to bring two guests from local charities doing good in the area and one personal guest.

This year I invited Wendy Woodcock, from the CfBT Education Trust, as she is Chair of Governors at Oxford Spires Academy where I am also a governor. CfBT is also the principal sponsor of Oxford Spires Academy.  I also invited Sue Croft, the Principal of Oxford Spires Academy. My personal guest was my sister, Emma, as she's been living in Oxford for a couple of years now and it seemed appropriate to introduce her to council colleagues.

The event is always a good opportunity to say thank you to those who work so hard for our City in various ways.  Wendy has done a sterling job helping a fledgling academy and its fledgling Governing Body to become effective very quickly and Sue really is an inspirational leader of Oxford Spires Academy.  The difference they will both make to education and educational attainment of Children in our City is, I think, extremely important.  I was delighted to be able to invite them both to the reception.  Some excellent links were made and it was good to raise the profile of Oxford Spires Academy among other councillors and their guests, as well as the City Council's Chief executive.

My sister is an independent speech and language therapist and had some useful conversations about her work with some of those present too.

Why I am on strike today

I work for the University of Oxford and am a paid-up member of the Universities and Colleges Union.  I've just set my work out of office message to read:

"Thank you for your email.  In line with the ballot of the University and Colleges Union I am taking part in industrial action in the form of a strike today to send a message to our government that I will not accept their erosion of and withdrawal of support to UK Higher Education.  This means I will not be dealing with any email sent to me today.  If you still wish to contact me please re-send your email another day."

I will not be crossing any picket lines in to the town hall today and fully support the action by all the hard working council staff that provide you and me with so many services we depend on right across the City.

It was bad enough that Clegg and co carped on about what a good thing tuition fees of £9k were and now the Tory-led coalition is attempting to slash remuneration for academic and academic-related (that's me) staff in Universities in the form of a big reduction in pension benefits and an increase in contributions from employees.  Now let me be clear, these changes don't affect me YET but I see them as part of a slippery slope so I am willing to join the legally-called strike action to support the work of the Universities and Colleges Union to protect the rights of my current and future colleagues and to join the collective effort in sending as strong a message as possible to the coalition that Higher Education (along with many other public services) is much more valuable than this and that the cuts are going too far.  If we screw higher education now then in 20 or so years time we'll be in a much greater mess than we are now!

I should also say that I don't think Labour did any better when in power and it's shocking how they don't really have a plan to get the UK out the financial mess THAT THEY LET US GET INTO when they were last in power.  We do have to sort out the economy and reverse the dangerous slip back to recession that we're currently seeing. The Leader of the Labour Party isn't even supporting this strike (See http://labourlist.org/2011/11/ed-miliband-wont-back-strikes/) which I think is frankly outrageous given how it was the Unions that got him elected to be leader of the party in the first place!

It's good to see that the coalition is taking its responsibilities on benefits seriously and has protected the most vulnerable in society from real-terms cuts in income. I'm also pleased to see that the chancellor has put the January rise in fuel taxes (struggling families really can't afford it any more than the many business that are now spending so much on fuel) on hold but there is still so much more that could be done.

I know it's fashionable to bash bankers and so on but really - do these people actually NEED to be so wealthy?  Remember - it wasn't the public sector workers (from nurses to civil servants to academics to border control staff) who caused this recession.  You didn't see them engaging in all sort of greed-fuelled high-risk, low-sense banking activity that simply made them richer and left the UK (and much of the rest of the world) in the mess it is now in.  And are they paying the penalty for any of this? Not a chance!  The coalition is trying to dump it all on the hard-working, lower-paid public sector and almost universally public spirited workers of our country.  If Labour had regulated the banks properly about 10 years ago then I believe we wouldn't be in the mess we are now in.  But I'm not an economist so don't pretend to have all the answers here.  [following comments, I should add that it's investment bankers I have the real problem with, not so much the retail bankers although they should not have been allowed to let individuals get into so much personal debt either]

Remember - nobody chooses a public sector job for the money - so for the coalition to hit us rather than hitting those who are making a fortune out of everyone else's suffering is, I think, utterly outrageous.

National Landlords Association Oxford Branch Meeting

This was an interesting meeting, attended by about 20 of Oxford's decent and honest landlords as well as Ian Wright, the City Council Service Manager that covers HMOs and Ken Staunton, the NLA Head of Regions.

Ken first spoke about the NLA Landlord accreditation scheme which looks like is a really useful thing.  I am impressed at how much information it provides and how it has a requirement for Continual Professional Development for Landlords.  That's very important in the continual changing regulatory landscape in which the business has to operate these days.

There was then a talk by Ian Wright from the City Council about the additional HMO registration scheme.  Ian did a good job of explaining what I think is a completely over-the top scheme that is crippling the HMO market.  It's not Ian's fault - he's just doing what the Labour Administration of Oxford City Council tell him but there really are a lot of charges and I was appalled to hear that the council is demanding extra works on 97% of properties where licenses are being applied for.  In most cases tenants and landlords were entirely happy before the council interfered.  Ian did show some slides of some awful cases where council intervention is clearly needed and welcome but I suspect none of those applied to to the good and honest landlords present last night.  There was also a list given of successful prosecutions.  I was a bit surprised that the names of all those convicted were included and didn't really understand why Ian included a case where someone had been imprisoned after performing an illegal eviction.  That case was nothing to do with HMO licensing even though that was the subject of Ian's talk.

There was a lot of dicussion and confusion about the change to HMO registration requirements coming in January 2012 and the Article 4 direction on planning which removes the permitted development right to change a property from C3 (domestic household) to C4 (HMO with 3-6 unrelated sharers) coming in February 2012.  It's fascinating to me that the council seems to act as if Landlords are nasty evildoers trying to extort money out of tenants while spending as little as possible whereas what I saw was a bunch of honest professionals trying to run their business in an honest a way as possible.  There is clearly a lot of confusion about the ridiculous amount over over-regulation the Labour council is trying to pile onto the HMO market in Oxford.  I find it really hard to understand as Oxford is depsperately short of housing and HMOs provide a vital part of the housing mix.  If Landlords are persecuted and saddled with ridiculous amounts of expense for work that nobody wants then that will just get passed on in increased rents and Oxford's housing (and homelessness) problems will jut get worse.  I wish Labour would just accept that being a landlord is just an honest business in the same that running a taxi, a shop, or a bar is.

The meeting took about 2 hours and was extremely interesting.