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:

Partnerships DiagramYou 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.

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

Just a quick post to say that planning permission was granted at yesterday’s planning review committee with an extra condition that lighting be installed on the access route – this was made a grampian condition meaning that if it can’t be met (e.g. if the landowner of the access route, the county council in this case, refuses to allow lighting) then the permission will fall.  I chaired the meeting and it passed off without any bad behaviour at all.

I would say more about the meeting but I have been subjected to an extremely foul email today from one of the Governors of East Oxford Primary School so I want to deal with that first. It contained:

“…Tony was seated at the head of the table, a place/position which he should not have taken, especially from what he did early by making such statements. Everything looked pre-planned beautifully. How was he even allowed in the room is beyond me? … Furthermore I must add how ashamed I am, that I have to live in a city, where people (councillors) like these have powers, and misuse them however they please. Undermining the greater good in our communities, especially for our school. Dismissing what’s important and siding with something that would do more harm than good. Personally I don’t know how they got their seats in the first place, or why they gave the go ahead on such an important matter, obviously this was an under hand job, maybe bribery was used?…

<name removed by me> (parent governor E.O.P.S)“

I won’t name the sender here but the email went to all 48 members of Oxford City Council so I guess it will get out eventually.  It really is not nice being accused of accepting a bribe and I must say, if the sender had been listening at the meeting the sender would have noticed that I recorded an abstention on the vote.  There was one other abstention, one against and 6 in favour of the application so it would have been granted however I voted and I don’t think anyone can reasonably accuse me of taking sides – I ran the meeting fairly and objectively as I hope those present will testify!

The meeting was not helped either by the Oxford Mail publishing an inflammatory story that same day that tried to pitch me against the residents by using a photo of Union Street onto which I had been superimposed.  I consider that photo to have been extremely misleading and unhelpful to the planning process.  If you click the picture here to enlarge it you’ll see around the border of my head how badly the journalists have pasted my image onto the scene.

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.