Brontë by Polly Teale

[caption id="attachment_219" align="alignright" width="300" caption="Michelle, Nancy and Polly"][/caption]

I was invited to see this production on Tuesday by the Shared Experience Company at the Oxford Playhouse so gladly accepted.  The performance was preceded by a reception where we had talks by Michelle Dickson (Director and Chief Executive of Oxford Playhouse), Nancy Meckler and Polly Teale (co-directors of Shared Experience).

I greatly enjoyed the play. It gave a really vivid and realistic depiction of how life must have been for the Brontë sisters living in that poor vicarage and putting up with their wayward brother.  I found the second half of the production really quite moving but won't spoil the plot for you here.  I highly recommend going to see it if you haven't already though! You don't have much time left but booking is available.

It was good to hear the news that the Shared Experience Theatre Company is now resident at the Oxford Playhouse.  Shared Experience says: "After many years of touring to the Playhouse we have come to enjoy a thriving relationship with both the theatre and it's audiences. For the first time in it's 35 year history Shared Experience will have a theatre for a home allowing us to evolve a special relationship with the city. We will premiere many of our plays in Oxford and create events that allow access to our rehearsal process and opportunities to see "behind the scenes" and get involved.  At our rehearsal space in London we will create productions for the Playhouse that will tour nationally and internationally bringing thrilling evenings of vivid theatricality to the widest possible audiences."

I am however horrified to see that the Arts Council has cut the national portfolio funding for Shared Experience at this exciting and fruitful time of its life.  Shared Experience say "We are shocked and disappointed to hear that we will receive no National Portfolio Funding from 2012. We feel strongly our work delivers the Arts Council’s goals and we are devastated by their decision. We will now take time to consider fully where we stand and explore how we will continue beyond 2012. We very much hope to find a way to continue our new partnership with Oxford Playhouse as their resident company."

I too hope that the partnership between the Playhouse and Shared Experience can be exploited as best as possible to ensure the continued viability of Shared Experience and the opportunity for the people of Oxfordshire and beyond to enjoy their creative expertise.

Hearing to determine application for later opening by Branos on Gloucester Green

I attended this licensing hearing today not as a member of the panel but as a ward councillor representing the views of the people who live in the City Centre are are affected by noise from the City-Centre late-night economy.

The application on the table was to allow the Branos burger and kebab bar on Gloucester Green (behind the Odeon) to open for an extra hour on Friday and Saturday nights.

I had emailed the St. John Street residents' association and put posters up in the flats on Gloucester Green (The Chilterns) letting people know.  I asked people to give me comments both positive and negative.  I had a few comments back and I think the major concerns were noise, litter and violence.  Some thought it was better to have people around to make the area feel safer but was frustrated by people ignoring the signs and sitting on the steps at the entrances to the Chilterns, making noise and leaving litter.

The panel decided to grant the extension from 3am to 4am on Friday and Saturday nights but with conditions that included identification-quality CCTV, extra staff on duty late so queues don't build up, staff to clear litter in the vicinity of the area and prominent signs in the stall asking patrons to keep quiet and not litter the area.  I hope these measures will reduce the impact on local residents as much as possible.

Special Full Council: Core Strategy

We had a short full council meeting today to vote on the finalised Core Strategy document that puts a strategic framework around development of our City for the next fifteen years.

The meeting started with a few words from the Lord Mayor about the terrible disaster unfolding in Japan. We had a minutes' silence to reflect on all the suffering and loss of life.

The core strategy was then presented by the deputy leader of the Council. Two speeches of five minutes were allowed by each of the Labour (administration), LibDem, and Green Groups. We had decided to abstain on the vote - not because we didn't approve of the core strategy as presented but because we didn't think it went far enough on things like the need to build housing and being more energy-efficient. The Green voted against and for some reason demanded a named vote whereby every councillor present has their name read out and has to declare their vote for the record.

There were lots of people in the public gallery who seemed in the most part opposed to the Northern Gateway proposals for housing.

I must say arguing over housing in Oxford, while a serious matter, did feel rather insignificant compared to the troubles some Japanese Cities will be facing for years to come after this weekend's earthquake.

City Centre Neighbourhood Action Group

A useful meeting with lots of Thames Valley Police officers present as well as councillors, residents' association people and Nightsafe.

We talked about drugs issues in nightclubs, speeding on St. Giles and Magdalen Bridge and fake Big Issue sellers.

These meetings are good at keeping City Centre stakeholders in touch. I was pleased to be able to explain that the Union Society (with which the Police say they have had a few behaviour problems) is nothing to do with Oxford University Students' Union.

Sainsburys Heyford Hill and the roundabout there

I received a useful letter in the post today that is basically information from Sainsburys Heyford Hill that you may or may not find useful. It is essentially outlining the plans for an extension and refit of the shop and reconfiguration of the Heyford Hill Roundabout to which the shop is directly linked.   Sainsburys has worked constructively with Oxfordshire County Council to develop a roundabout improvement scheme. The current outline of works is:

• Sun 6 Mar to mid-April 2011: Reconfigure and resurface car park


• Early April to mid-October: Highway works to upgrade Heyford Hill Roundabout


• Early May to Mid-June: Demolition and ground works for shop extension


• Mid-June to Mid-July: Shop extension construction


• Mid-July to Mid-October: Internal re-fit


• Mid-late October: Re-opening

Sainsburys anticipate a short closure of up to a week in the run up to the re-opening in October.

I suppose my main concern with this is that it will involve even MORE traffic lights.  The ones on the Tesco Roundabout at Cowley, while of course extremely useful in the rush hour, are just an utter pain at other times and cause huge delays to everyone trying to navigate the roundabout.  I just hope the traffic lights here will be a bit better thought-out.

Licensing and Gambling Acts Committee

A fairly quick and painless meeting at which we reviewed the licensing activities of the City Council for the last quarter, considered the impacts of the extension of licensing hours nationally until 1am on the day of the forthcoming Royal Wedding and agree to recommend the new charges for the 2011-12 financial year.  We were done in 3o minutes!

I was pleased to hear the the licensing team is planning to get accredited so it can offer training for new personal licence holders.   I think this is a good move for the people of Oxford and the City Council as nobody understands the local context better than the people who's job it is to manage and regulate it.

Labour killing democratic accountability?

I received a consultation questionnaire in my council mail today about the proposed changes to the Council's decision-making process. I'm afraid I think this is one of those consultations that is basically there to tell people what has already been decided. I don't think public comments will make any difference to what is going to happen.

The changes are essentially:

• Abolish monthly formal Area Committees, and their revenue budgets, and replace them with quarterly informal, largely powerless, Area Forums.


• Remove powers to make planning decisions from the local level and set up two large planning committees that won't really have any neighbourhood link or context understanding.  There will be a "west" and and "east" committee.  Bizarrely the west committee will include east Oxford!  The committees will be politically balanced meaning each will have 4 Labour members, 3 LibDems and 1 Green.  I think this is shocking as it means the administration effectively takes over control of all planning decisions.  In the current scheme North area has a LibDem majority and East has a Green majority.


• Remove planning decisions call-in to full council and replace this with a "planning appeals committee".  This will also be politically balanced, so Labour-controlled.


• Drastically cut the number of Executive Board meetings and let executive councillors make most decisions that were previously Executive Board decisions on their own with no requirement for a public meeting.


• Give each councillor a paltry £1500 to spend as they wish on their ward.

You can read about this in detail and I urge you to fill in the consultation as I think this is an extremely important matter of local democracy and accountability.  You need to register first to do the survey but please do - this is really important!  It's clear Labour doesn't want to hear much from you as the boxes only allow 500 characters and that includes spaces! You can see my response on my website.

My main concern is how the changes will effectively render the councillors of the North Area Committee (entirely LibDem) and those of the East Area Parliament (almost all Green) pretty much voice-less and powerless.  My own area, Central South and West will no longer see political balance of 4 Labour 4 LibDem but instead all its planning decisions will be made by committees with a Labour majority.  I have rarely seen such megalomania in a political party as Oxford Labour!

Antisocial behaviour by pub operators

This was an interesting piece of casework and a good opportunity to serve the people who elected me! My attention was drawn to the issue by an article in the Cherwell student newspaper.  So I contacted the Lincoln JCR president and we've had a very useful meeting. It appears the main problem is that the operators of the Turl Bar, which is part of the same block as lots of Lincoln College student accommodation, are making a lot of noise emptying containers of used bottles into recycling bins late at night and that loud music is becoming more and more of an issue.

As the venue (The Turl Bar) will close forever on 31st May this year there is probably no merit in taking formal action.  I hope the licensing team will, with a conciliatory approach, be able to persuade Whitbread's staff running the Turl Bar to be a bit more considerate.  I hope the staff will remember that many students have their living and studying space in extremely close proximity to the bar and that May is an extremely important month for study and revision, particularly for those facing finals exams. Finals directly dictate their degree result and to a large extend the path and/or success of the rest of their lives.  I am impressed at the amount of records and personal impact statements the students of Lincoln College have been able to provide. I hope this will underline the seriousness of the problem with Whitbread and their staff.

Although this is short-term problem on council time-scales it represents a huge risk to the success of Lincoln students if a solution is not found.  The month of May represents more than half of some students' final term of study and continuous noise and sleep disruption is quite intolerable.

Budget - and council tax-setting full council

A long meeting tonight ably chaired as ever by Cllr John Goddard, the Lord Mayor of Oxford.

We started with addresses from the public and heard a moving speech about the plight of the Oxfordshire Chinese Community and Advice Centre as well as some exciting information about a community-based film called NoBalls that is directed by my friend Martyn Chalk, owner and founder of Chalkstar films, and produced by Rubia Braun, of Metro Brava, who spoke at the meeting. That's her in the picture.  We heard more about Temple Cowley Pools from Nigel Gibson and Jane Alexander and a speech about Democratic openness as well as an address from a Unison representative urging the Council to save jobs and services with extra money now available in the budget.

We moved on next to the budget proper.  We had a lot of gesturing from the Labour Administration about how this was a budget nobody wanted and how it was all the coalition government's fault.  Funny how they seem to think the UK economy has got into the state it is in just since May 2010 and that everything Labour when in government did was right until then.  Next the Lib Dem budget was able presented by Alan Armitage and Stephen Brown.  We were the only party to suggests cuts to councillor allowances and we also put in provision to save administrative support for Area Committees and to keep Temple Cowley Pools open for a few more years while finances improved and better solution than losing a pool within the ring road in East Oxford could be found.  The Green budget was also presented and had some bizzare extra additions like saving St. Clement's car park even though the Greens are meant to be so anti-car.

After supper, of course with a majority administration the Labour Budget got through unamended.

We then set the council tax for 2012 and agreed a zero change in the City Council part of your bill.  Next was questions from members of council.  Jean Fooks asked a useful question about compelling business to be less wasteful with energy and John Tanner replied that there was no legal power to do that but that the administration was working with local businesses through low carbon Oxford to try to reduce the City's carbon footprint.  I asked questions about the possibility of having a separate dog training area in Cowley Marsh Park but was told the council has no money or policy for this and that it couldn't be done on the disused tennis courts.   The portfolio holder, Cllr Lygo, did agree to have a meeting with the founders of the Fellowship of Responsible Oxford Dog Owners to talk about possibilities so that's at least encouraging.  Interestingly he also said the tennis courts were to be refurbished and provided with new nets.  I know that will please Temple Cowley residents and am just sorry it's taken so long to get agreement to get that done.

We moved on to motions on notice and I tried to amend the one by the Deputy Leader of the Council as it started well, praising the constructive work of the Unions in minimising impact on staff and council services in these difficult times but then moved on to political gesturing and trying to get council staff to engage in political action.  I don't think it's appropriate for councillors formally to encourage staff to take part in any political action as many of them will be politically restricted.  The proposer refused to accept my amendment removing the problematic parts of the motion so our group was unable to support the motion at all which was a shame.

The council then agreed the statement of licensing policy very quickly as it had already been past all area committees and the licensing and gambling acts committee.

The final item was discussion of members allowances.  I believe very firmly that if we councillors are having to cut staff and services then we should also take a cut in our own allowances.  We LibDems proposed a 10% cut and also a cut in some special responsibility allowances for City Executive Board members but were voted against by the Greens and Labour who wanted to keep their personal allowances as they are.  Typical do as we do, not what we say attitude from Labour and Green.  One Labour member shouted at us that we should give our allowances to the Big Society - actually several of us in the LibDem group already do substantial charitable giving...

We finished around 9pm.

Brilliant Group Meeting

We had a really good Lib Dem group meeting today. Lots of really good ideas and good discussion forming into consensus on many things. I thought the meeting was very ably chaired by Alan Armitage and it was clear that he and Stephen Brown have done a huge amount of work on our budget proposals. I think things will work really well in terms of our holding the administration to account on Monday evening at full council. Watch this space!

Central South and West Area Committee

We met at St Barnabas School on Hart Street today.  It was freezing cold and sitting on children's chairs is not ideal.  There was not a huge amount on the agenda although we had a useful update on street scene issues and a City Centre Police report from Insp. Matt Bullivant.

There were no planning applications although we did talk about the plans to make Jericho a conservation area and put an article 4 direction area in place (which basically removes permitted development rights from building owners).  Although some buildings in Jericho, notably St. Barnabas Church, are worth preserving I must say that a lot of the housing is very substandard with no cavity walls, poorly insulated windows and incredibly insubstantial foundations.  I'm not quite sure why we are preserving rows and rows of cheap houses that were originally built as mass housing for the poor.  I think the planning restrictions will severely limit people's ability or inclination to make their properties more energy efficient and I think that's a real shame.

There was a presentation from a County Council officer about the cuts to libraries and youth services.  I was very embarrassed at the hard time one member of the committee gave the officer, especially in public!  It's not the officer that decided on the cuts - it was the Tory County Councillors!  Talk about shoot the messenger!

We finished just after 7.30pm all very cold and uncomfortable on the children's chairs.

Wesley Memorial Methodist Church redevelopment project

I was invited to go and have a tour and discussion with Derek Rawson, the chair of the Open Doors Steering group, about the exciting plans that Wesley Memorial Church has for its buildings.  The plans are well-outlined on their website and essentially aim to make the premises more welcoming, flexible and hospitable.  The plans add a glass enclosure between the main church building and the John Wesley Room and also remodel the stage at the back of the main hall.  Wesley Mem. houses the hugely successful Rainbow House Children's Café and the redevelopment will give it more space and a much better kitchen to use.  The plans also add more offices and meeting space to the site and provide access to a piece of the original City Wall that is of archaeological and historical significance.  I hope that some sort of grant from the City Council can be arranged as it is good for other fund-raising for projects such as this to have support from local authorities.

Licensing and Gambling Acts Committee special meeting

We met today for the sole purpose of signing off the revised statement of licensing policy.  It had been to all of the Area Committees but we still had quite a lot of discussion from two councillors who represent areas to the East of the City Centre about how they would like off-licences included in the special saturation policy (area pictured) for East Oxford.  Unfortunately councils can't change the law on when SSPs are applicable!

A picture was painted of chaos and bedlam on Cowley Road with people drinking in the streets and then getting even more drunk in pubs there.  I must say, as someone who cycles or walks home along Cowley Road practically every day and at all hours of the day and night I don't recognise that picture at all.  I don't deny there are problems in East Oxford but I hardly think closing off licences is going to help.  The two councillors that reported all this trouble live in Headington and Iffley Village and I can't help wondering how much they actually see Cowley Road late at night.  I of course don't doubt their integrity and I know there have been a few nasty incidents recently but I do think the issues we see in Cowley Road are sometimes rather exaggerated.

What worried me most was that one member of the committee thought that good work had been done by a panel that refused a recent off-licence application for a new premises in Oxford only to have it granted on appeal by the Oxford Magistrates.  I'm afraid that if panels refuse things with absolutely no evidence directly attributable to the site in question, and no objection from the Police, then that's not really good work in my book.  The licence will almost certainly get granted on appeal and runs the real risk of Magistrates (quite rightly) awarding costs against the City Council for behaving unreasonably in its decision.  Councillors sitting on licensing panels MUST make decisions based on evidence and evidence alone.  Licensing panel member do nobody any good at all if we don't base decisions on evidence, especially the council-tax paying residents of Oxford, as decisions will not stand up to appeal and costs awarded against the Council will just come from council tax-payers money meaning other services have to suffer.

After all that discussion we did eventually agree to the licensing policy.

At home with the Christopher Lewis, Dean of Christ Church

I was invited to this event, I guess because I am a City Centre Councillor.  It was held at the Deanery at Christ Church and all sorts of notable folk from the City and surrounding area were present.  I had the great pleasure of meeting some senior county councillors as well as many of the senior staff of Christ Church itself.  The Dean himself and is wife were both extremely gracious and very good and making sure people were introduced to each other.  It was a fascinating gathering to which I felt extremely privileged to be invited.

Oxford Chinese New Year Gala Evening

What an amazing evening!  I was invited to this event as a ward councillor and I'm really glad I went.  It really was a multi-talented, multi-colour spectacular of entertainment.  The event was organised by the Oxford Chinese Students and Scholars Association.

The large audience included several important figures from the Chinese Embassy, including Minister Counsellor Mr Xiaogang Tian, as well as senior figures from Oxford University including Dr Stephen Goss, one of the Pro-Vice-Chancellors.  Dr Goss gave an excellent speech about how important the Chinese link is to Oxford University with Chinese being the 2nd most common nationality among undergraduates, 3rd-most with graduates and 4th-most in staff.

We heard two choirs, one opera singer, some martial arts, a fashion show, a somewhat manic but very good violin player and much more.  I was grateful to the Chinese embassy official sitting next to me for providing some translations!

The amazing multicultural mix in Oxford is one of the great things about our City and it really humbling and an honour to attend such a wonderful event.

Grays Road Store informal premises licence review

This was interesting as it was about a premises licence that had previously been before a licensing panel for review in 2010.  That panel had resolved to revoke the licence but the shop owners had appealed to the Oxford Magistrates to reconsider the decision (as is their right).  It appears that the problems had arisen following the passing away of the original Designated Premises Supervisor as the deceased's family were continuing to run the store and were making mistakes, I suspect partly due to grieving the loss of their relative and partly due to inexperience.

Thames Valley Police had been working with the shops owners and the owners had clearly undertaken a lot of training and employed professional licensing experts to train them in running an off-licence operation properly, with particular focus on avoiding selling alcohol to minors.  Oxford Magistrates had asked the matter to be referred back to a licensing panel for consideration and opinion.

After some discussion and questioning  the shop owners and operators managed to come to agreement on a set of operating conditions with the Thames Valley Police licensing officer so the panel (of which I was part) was then able to direct the City Council Solicitor to advise the Magistrates that we thought the licence could probably safely remain in force now and invite the Magistrates to consider that in their decision.  It is of course open to the Magistrates to pursue any course they think suitable including revoking the licence completely or allowing it to stay in force with no extra conditions.  I hope neither of those things happens!

Please note this post does not form an official record of proceedings and should not be treated as such.  The meeting was not a formal hearing as such and Oxford Magistrates will be invited to make the final decision.

City Centre Neighbourhood Action Group

This group met today and discussed various issues around crime and safety in the City Centre area.  It consists of lots of Thames Valley Police staff right from Inspector to Police Community Support Officers.  Community safety officers and estate managers are present as well as resident, park rangers, the City Centre Manager and Nightsafe.

The agenda included discussions about drug dealing & misuse, alcohol-related antisocial behaviour and litter issues.

The NAGs are actually very useful in terms of keeping all the relevant authorities, including the Police,  in touch with each other and enable a much more holistic approach to general community safety and well-being than would otherwise be possible.

Full Council

We had quite a good meeting today.  We had some addresses by members of the public about disability access as well as more about Temple Cowley Pools.  It's such a shame the Labour administration seems so hell-bent on depriving the Temple Cowley and East Oxford of such a well-loved and well-used community facility but I do rather feel the battle is lost now.  I was rather disappointed to hear one speaker make entirely inappropriate remarks about the probity of the leader of the Council.

We moved through executive board recommendations, most of which were not controversial.  I am disappointed that City Council is going to start charging for parking in quite a few well-used places including those where people park to take their children to football practice etc. and I hope this won't decrease participation.  I do understand the need to balance the budget though.  I was also disappointed to see that the report proposes putting in mains-powered ticket machines rather than solar-powered ones, simply because the latter don't contain a heater to keep the tickets dry.  Surely there must be a better way!

We then moved into the questions on notice, starting with  a question from a Green councillor about the terrible human rights abuses happening in Iran at the moment.  Lots of members of the public were in the gallery to hear this question which is why it was taken first.  All present agreed that the council should send a strong message of support to those oppressed and a strong message of disapproval to the Iranian authorities.  The international links committee was not the right way to do it but the leader said he would do what was appropriate, as did the Lord Mayor.

I asked a question about why the "save East Oxford" banner had been targeted for enforcement by the planning department.  Colin Cook, the portfolio holder, said it had been done without his knowledge but was the result of a complaint from a member of the public and because it was a listed building it had received high priority.

I also asked a question about the threatened closure to the public of the waste and recycling centre at Redbridge and the risk of increased flytipping.  I received a somewhat reassuring response from John Tanner, the portfolio holder, that he (along with the other Oxfordshire districts) had had a very robust discussion with the County Council and were hoping to reach some agreement on keeping Redbridge and other centres open.  It wasn't a promise but it felt like a move in the right direction. The County is already offering money to the districts to cover increased fly-tipping clear-up cost but personally I'd rather see that money used keeping the tip open!

After the questions we had a break for tea and I had an extremely useful chat with the chair of licensing (I'm the vice chair) about a few issues.

After tea we moved to the motions, the usual political grandstanding that doesn't achieve a huge amount and is probably the ugliest part of being a councillor.  I thought the most significant motion was the one about tuition fees.  It was by a Labour Councillor.  Mark Mills, one of our group, put an amendment that pointed out some of the positive things that are happening around education funding which I actually thought was rather helpful.  Sadly the Labour and Green groups just mocked it and called it an apology for the coalition's actions on this (which I have already said I think are terrible).

I then stood up and said I was quite willing to say I was ashamed of what the government had done to higher education funding, just as I'm sure the Labour members were ashamed of at least some of what their party's leadership had done in government. That's what happens when you're in a party that is in government!  I urged us all to step back and to consider that although the cuts were very bad, I firmly believe that we as councillors have a duty to encourage our young people to take up educational opportunities and to encourage them, where appropriate, into higher education, not to scare them off with political grandstanding.  I received a round of applause for this and even a nice email from a Labour councillor today about it.  After the amendment fell the Labour group asked for a named vote on the substantive motion.  This happened.  Lib Dem group mostly abstained but I voted in favour of the motion.  It passed as the Labour group voted for it and they have a majority.

The meeting finished around 9pm.

The saga of the street lights on Magdalen Bridge

Back in early December 2010 I noticed that none of the street lamps along the North side of Magdalen Bridge was working.  This isn't strictly in my ward but I cycle home that way every day and it's still City Centre.  I saw a potential safety issue with cyclists having to pull out to turn right at the Plain and the risk of drivers of buses, cars, vans etc. not seeing them, especially if the cyclists were dressed in dark clothes and not using lights.  Sadly that still happens far more often than it should.  Many students also report feeling unsafe walking over the bridge and the darkness was not going to help that!

I made a report about the problem to the County Council street light repair service on 9th December. That service is normally excellent and things get repaired in a few days, almost always less than a week.  I got a response the same day saying a 24hr job had been raised.

On 13th December I got an update saying the street light repair contractors had attended and found a power supply fault so had passed the issue onto Scottish and Southern Energy the body responsible for dealing with such issues.  SSE is contracted to repair such faults in 20 working days.  I asked if this could be given priority as it affected so many lights and on 14th December the County Council said they would try to pull some strings.

On 12th January 2011 I reminded the County Council that the 20 working days were now up (count them yourself if you don't believe me!).  Unusually I got no reply so sent a reminder on 17th January.  I got a reply quickly that said, among other things:

"Guaranteed Standards of Performance for street lighting cable fault repairs became a statutory requirement from 01 October 2010. We will therefore claim penalty payments from SSE at £10 a day, for every day over 20 working days the fault is outstanding."

I was also given the contact details for a person at SSE and the job reference so I could complain directly.  I did so, as did the Bursar of a nearby College.  I got a "not me guv" type of reply yesterday helpfully giving the contact details of the Oxford Depot manager for SSE as well as the engineer dealing with the issue. But still no progress!

Earlier in the week, while I was dealing with the order for Cherwell Student Newspaper for our department I mentioned this issue to the person I was dealing with.  He passed it on to one of the Cherwell journalists who has today pursued SSE about the issue.  I think the word "journalist" must have worked better than the word "councillor" because the job has now magically been programmed!

I have had an email this afternoon from the County Council saying:

"I have been told by SSE that there is a major cable fault on the bridge, which will require a power shutdown affecting businesses in the area (such as Sainsbury's). The work has been programmed for next Thursday to allow the relevant businesses to be informed."

So there we are.  Some casework is easy, some takes ages and far too much chasing!  I am amused that a journalist managed to achieve, in about half an hour, more than I have achieved in a month with this issue! Well done Cherwell.  The £10/day fine for missing the service deadline does seem a rather paltry amount and is hardly going to make contractors take much notice of the20-day limit.  I wonder why it is set so low.

Watch out for working lights next Thursday (27th Jan)!  Update:  There is now an article in Cherwell about this.

Labour's planning department trying to silence objectors?

There was an interesting story in the press today about how the Labour administration of Oxford City Council is trying to use its powers of planning enforcement to get a large poster objecting to the St. Clements' Car park redevelopment removed.  The poster is on the side of a listed building without consent so it is right that it shouldn't be there but I can't help finding it odd that the planning department is being so heavy-handed with this when it simply just doesn't do so much other enforcement work.  The poster was put up with the permission of the occupiers of the building so it does seem rather unfair (if not illegal) of the City Council to try to force the poster to be taken down.

Last night I had an email (it went to all councillors and our local MP so I'm assuming it's not very private!) which put the matter rather well, I thought:

"I read in the Oxford Times that a sign placed on Finders Keepers Estate Agents protesting against the development of the St Clements’ Car Park has been ordered to be removed by the council planning department as it allegedly infringes the status of the building as a listed property and contravenes advertising laws.

I myself phoned the planning department some months ago about the profusion of satellite dishes appearing in the East Oxford conservation area. I was told by a planning officer that this was a low priority and that the funds were not available to deal with the ‘60 or more’ dishes in the area of which the planning officer was aware, all of which infringed planning law. He also told me that his practise was to send in some cases a threatening letter to the property owner, but if the dish was not removed to do nothing thereafter.

Should we assume that following the threatening letter from the planning department about this sign (and assuming the sign is not removed)  the planning department will then do nothing, as it does with other minor infractions of local planning law ? Or does the council believe that the sign protesting the St Clements Car Park is a special case deserving of unusual resources from the taxpayer to remove ?"

The correspondent may well ask!  I certainly intend to.  It seems a bit of a conflict that the planning department is effectively using resources to stifle very wide public dissent to a scheme that it itself is supporting.  It doesn't feel very democratic to me.

Your views welcome.   You can also look at the Save St.Clements website.