This was a good meeting although our numbers were quite low.  It was ably chaired by Sgt Stuart Hudson, a City Centre Sergeant with Thames Valley Police. PCs Rob Parker and Paul Phillips were also present.

The issue of drug dealing in the Oxpens/Friars Wharf/Speedwell Street area seems to have gone quiet so this is a good thing.  There are still problems with drinking in the street and general disorder around the St. Michael Street and Luther Street areas.  This always becomes more of a problem as the weather gets warmer and the lighter evenings come along but I was a bit alarmed to hear that some residents are feeling St. Michael’s Street is a becoming a no-go area after 4pm.  I am pleased that TVP is doing a lot of close work with residents to help ensure that this problem and their fear of it is tackled effectively.  The Luther Street issues are ongoing and TVP continue to work with O Hanlon House, A2 Dominion Housing Association and the Luther Street Medical Centre.  Some more signs about street drinking are also being investigated although I have my reservations about how effective these will be!

Big Issue selling still seems to be problematic with sellers actually begging (which is illegal) rather than selling and ignoring the 10pm curfew on such sales.

We talked about how many students want to help people on the streets but don’t know how.  Giving cash was not recommended as most estimates think that over 75% of that goes on drugs and alcohol, which does not necessarily help.  A voucher scheme for O’Hanlon house (the “night shelter”) has been tried but there was too much black-market selling and counterfeiting so it was stopped.  I don’t believe this is an insurmountable problem and would like to see a scheme where people can buy vouchers online and print them themselves with a unique barcode on them (a bit like a boarding pass or a Groupon).

Finally, having complained about speeding on St Giles, I was horrified to find that 90% of drivers were speeding when TVP did a check recently.  I hope something can be done about this and suggested a firm letter to the Oxford Bus companies as buses are some of the worst offenders in my experience.

This was a sad evening.  I have had six years of working with Central South and West Area Committee and we’ve had some great times and hopefully served the people of Central, South and West Oxford well over that time.  Today’s meeting was at the Deaf Direct Centre, on Littlegate Street (St Ebbe’s) and I thought it worked rather well as a venue.  One of the few times we’ve had the area committee in Carfax ward so I hope we’ll be able to hold some of the new Area Forum meetings there.

The agenda is available online and I was about 15 minutes late as I had been at a meeting at Oxford Spires Academy where I am a governor.

I think the most notable item was a rather large dormer window planning application for a property on the south corner of Abingdon Road and Kineton Road.  The planning officers were recommending us to approve as this was an improvement on an even more obtrusive previous application that they had declined under delegated powers but their steer was that we could probably decide either way quite legitimately.  The dormer windows were to be on the rear elevation of the property and would probably not be allowed on the front.  Stephen Brown’s argument that the side of the house is also the front on a corner plot is what convinced me to vote against the application.  Most of the rest of the committee agreed and the application was turned down.

The meeting finished around 6.45pm giving just enough time for a quick dinner and a pint at the Swan and Castle in time to get to the Annual Lib Dem Group meeting at the town hall at 7.30pm.  A busy day for a councillor!

Well this was a mammoth of a meeting!  We started with the normal formalities and also observed a minute’s silence to mark the death of Bob Hoyle, who served Oxford City Council as a member for many years.  Bob was also a personal friend so this was a particularly poignant moment.

We heard a few addresses from members of the public including several people objecting to the end of Area Committees and the new planning arrangements coming into force.  We also had addresses from Jane Alexander and Nigel Gibson about the proposed new pool at Blackbird Leys and how nobody seemed really to want it, and concerns of more elderly and infirm users that it would be much colder than the current pool, possibly meaning they couldn’t use it.

We had the usual plethora of questions from members of council, which are really more about making a point in public than actually needing to ask in that forum.  There were then two petitions, one about publicly funded leisure in Oxford and one about the Chinese Advice Centre which has suffered a savage cut to its grant this year at the hands of the Labour-run Council.  We stopped then for council tea and I had to dash home and back on my bike as I’d forgotten my lights and it would be dark at the end of the meeting.

After tea we moved on to the motions on notice and I was quite appalled at how many members of the Labour administration appeared to be deliberately filibustering so that we would run out of time and not get to the motions that might embarrass them.  There was one motion about Bee colonies and I was flabbergasted at home much research and how many long speeches we heard from Labour councillors.

We also had a discussion about the new single-member decision-making that is coming into force and I expressed concerned about how transparent that would be and quite how a single member is going to make any decision other than the one recommended on the report that they will probably have requested and approved!

The final item that caught my attention was a tightening up of taxi licencing policy and making some recommendations on the relevance of offences, cautions and convictions of those applying to be private hire or hackney carriage drivers.  I think it must be right that the decision-making panels have discretion to take these into account even when they might be “spent” for other purposes as taxi drivers are in a huge position of trust and we as councillors cannot risk putting vulnerable members of our society at risk by allowing people with incompatible histories to take on such positions of responsibility.

The meeting finished after 10pm and I was very glad to get home and have a rest before bed!  You can see a video of this meeting (beware it’s 338 minutes long!)

This was a fascinating presentation by Oxford University’s Estates department.  After a sandwich lunch we were shown a fascination presentation by Mike Wigg, the Acting Director of Estates.

It’s great to see that the University has so much going on in this time of economic difficulty.    Mike covered areas including:  the Science Area; Outside Oxford; Bodleian Libraries Projects; the Headington Hospital Sites; International Projects  and the Radcliffe Observatory Quarter.

I was particularly interested to hear about the roof replacement on the University Museum and also enjoyed the tour around the new Earth Sciences building.  We saw a mass spectrometer that had just been delivered and was in the process of being assembled, and had to wear shoe covers to go in that room.  I was also fascinated by the information about the burial ground that had been discovered on the old Radcliffe Infirmary site.

I think it’s great that the University is showing that it has a proper strategic building plan and I am glad that all this work will keep lots of local people employed in these difficult financial times.  It also makes planning decisions easier if councillors can see them as part of a clearly well-thought out strategic plan.

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.