Consultation on changes to Woodstock Road near Radcliffe Observatory Quarter

I’ve just received an incredibly helpful email from a highways engineer in the County Council.  It is a pre-consultation on the proposals for making Woodstock Road safer and more attractive in the area of the development that Oxford University is undertaking on the site of the old Radcliffe Infirmary.  It starts:

“The University of Oxford is currently redeveloping the former Radcliffe Infirmary Hospital site adjacent to Woodstock Road and has provided funding to Oxfordshire County Council for improvements to the highway adjacent to the site. The new development will have two pedestrian through routes linking Woodstock Road and Walton Street on the northern and southern side of the site which will increase the number of pedestrians within the area.

The existing carriageway is of variable width with mandatory cycle lanes in both directions, bus stops and pay & display parking along the north western side. The buildings adjacent to Somerville College create a natural pinch-point and narrow the carriageway to approximately 8.5m which tends to help in reducing vehicle speeds.

Further north the road then widens to over 13.5m in the vicinity of the Royal Oak Public House making it difficult for pedestrians to cross, even during periods of low traffic flow.

The northbound bus stop has a modern glass and stainless steel shelter with Real Time journey Information (RTI) located within a 2.5m wide section of footway. The southbound stop has an old brick shelter poorly located at the back of a 2.1m wide footway and adjacent to a vehicle access. This shelter has no RTI and provides no forward visibility of approaching buses so passengers are forced to leave the shelter and stand outside where they reduce the usable width of footway.”

highway plans for roq areaThere is then a list of proposals and a useful PDF that shows them in a more graphical form if, like me, you respond better to pictures than words!  Here are the proposals:

Widening the footways where possible to improve pedestrian movements within the area.

  • Narrow the carriageway running lanes to 3.0m, this will help in encouraging lower vehicle speeds and reduce the crossing distance for pedestrians. To reduce the speed of approaching traffic this principle will be extended north to Observatory Street by applying a road surface treatment along the centreline.
  • Maintain the existing 1.5m mandatory cycle lanes in both directions but replace the standard carriageway marking with a double row of cleft (rough) engineered granite setts 20mm high with tapered edges to discourage motorists from inadvertently entering the cycle lane.
  • Use low height kerbs (50mm) within the general area to assist pedestrians when crossing especially for people with mobility problems with the exception of the bus stops which will have 120mm high kerbs to facilitate boarding and alighting.
  • Relocate the southbound bus stop slightly further north to a wider area of footway and provide a new style shelter with improved visibility of approaching buses, capable of being fitted with RTI.
  • Provide a flush central feature to act as a pedestrian refuge, similar to that used on Oxford High Street. This will allow pedestrians to cross an individual lane of traffic approaching from one direction at a time then wait in the central area before completing the crossing movement.
  • Provide courtesy style crossings at the northern and southern limits to coincide with the link routes to Walton Street. This style of crossing has already been successfully used within Oxford Railway Station, Corn Street in Witney and Thame High Street. These flat topped humps will highlight pedestrian priority and will also be inlayed with engineered granite setts to give the appearance of a zebra crossing but without the need to provide unsightly zig-zag markings and flashing belisha beacons.
  • The inclusion of enhanced crossing points will result in the loss of some on-street parking; all but four spaces will be re-located to the northern end of the scheme.
  • The scheme will be sympathetic to the historical context of the adjacent buildings with improved paving, granite chippings in the road surface and reduced street clutter.

I’m very interested to hear people’s view on this so please do let me know what you think.  Once the consultation is officially open I’ll add the official consultation response details.  I should also remind you that under the Local Government (Access to Information) Act 1985 the Council is obliged to make any representations received in formal response open to public inspection.  Please do go ahead and comment on this post – those comments will be public anyway but do not form part of the official consultation responses.

Disgusting treatment of the Covered Market and Labour’s contemptuous remarks

The Covered Market is one of the nicest things in Carfax Ward, the part of the Oxford I represent. I blogged last year about the terrible neglect of the place by the City Council and I’m getting increasingly worried that the appalling treatment it is getting by the Labour administration is going to kill it off once and for all.  I use the Market Barber in the covered market and works to that unit seem to have been going on for ages too.  I hear of stories of bodged roof repairs meaning units get flooded when it rains and there is a leak into the cellar and someone’s storage space that the City Council should have addressed months ago.

There’s an article about this in the Oxford Mail today about this and I have to say I am disgusted by the remarks Labour’s Colin Cook makes about some of the long serving and hard working traders.  He says,

“This situation is not just down to high rents. It’s partly as a result of the age of some traders, who are looking to retire and cash in their chips.

“When rents are assessed for market traders we look at close comparators on the high street.”

I don’t know about you but I think that is pretty outrageous, not to mention ageist and totally lacking in gratitude for the wonderful service to our City and tourist attraction the Market represents.  I do rather agree with the Oxford Mail editorial comment about this.  “while the council has a duty to maximise its income from its asset, it has to be big enough to realise that and make the necessary adjustments to make this an attractive business opportunity.”

My colleague Cllr Jim Campbell put the rent issue rather well in a letter to the Oxford Mail earlier this year.  He says “Although the rate of inflation over the past five years is less than 18 per cent, they have proposed rent increases of between 40 and 60 per cent.”

I think it is an utter disgrace that Oxford Labour claims to be the champion of fighting bad landlords and at the same time has so badly neglected the Covered Market and is pushing such clearly ridiculous and unsustainable rent rises.

Labour:  You are killing the HMO sector already with onerous costs on landlords – please don’t now kill the Covered Market by pricing the tenants out of the retail units.

Amazing work from City Works again!

Some of you will be aware that I worship at St. Columba’s United Reformed Church on Sundays. This morning, those that arrived a bit early (around 10am) found most of the recycling bins (that I think belong to All Bar One) emptied all over Alfred Street so there was masses of rubbish and broken glass everywhere. Too much certainly to drive over. This was a big problem as we were due a visit from the Churches together in Central Oxford ecumenical donkey at 10.45am.  What you see in the picture is almost the end of the clean-up.  It was FAR worse than that.

One of our elders phones City Works and I was hugely impressed at how quickly they got there and what a great job they did of clearing up.  These guys really are  a credit to our City.  Thank you!

I do wonder why it is places like All Bar One are allowed to leave so many recycling containers all over the street on Saturday night into Sunday though.  They are incredibly ugly and I don’t think commercial collections happen on Sundays anyway.

Three licensing hearings

There were three hearings today: A variation for Thirst Lodge on Park End Street, a new license for The Oxford Kebab House on Manzil Way and a license review for the Hi-Lo Jamaican Eating House on Cowley Road.

I couldn’t hear the first as the Council has a policy that ward councillors cannot decide licensing applications in their own wards. I am not alone in thinking this is silly as we are perfectly allowed to make planning decisions (which are much more final if they are approvals) and we have good training and strict rules about declaring conflicts of interest in any case.

The first hearing was basically an application for an extra half hour of opening at Thirst Lodge. Everyone acknowledged that this is a well-run venue but Thames Valley Police were objecting on the basis of the City Centre Special Saturation Policy (SSP). I have to say I think the Police were right to object. The decision was to grant the variation and personally I think that was the wrong decision as it undermines the validity of the  SSP. While Thirst is very well run so probably won’t be a problem with an extra half hour, I’d not like to commit to that position for all venues in the City Centre SSP area.

The second hearing was the license review for the Hi-Lo Jamaican eating house.  This was quite difficult as there was clearly some misunderstanding on the part of the license holder about what was permitted and what was not, as well as when it was permitted.  Part of the problem is that this was a license “grandfathered” from the pre-2003 Act licensing arrangements so some of the terminology in it was obsolete.  We had a good discussion with the licensee and with City Council Environmental Protection (EP) and eventually decided that a short suspension of the ability to play licensable live or recorded music was in order.  We were told that lots of measures had been put in place to mitigate the problems that had been the basis of lots of complaints (with lots of evidence from Environmental Protection Officers) but as the problems had been severe and ongoing we felt it necessary for another visit from EP to happen so this could be officially checked.  If all was in order we were happy then for the licensing team to re-instate the licensable music on the premises license.  We also clarified that after the terminal hour for licensable music then background (non-licensable) music should be just that – barely audible in the premises itself, let alone in adjoining premises or outside.  I hope that things will be resolved soon and that the license can be re-instated once EP is happy that the premises can operate without damaging the rights of it neighbours to quiet enjoyment of their own premises.  It should be noted that we did nothing to the hours during which the venue is allowed to serve food or alcohol as neither of these had been the cause of any complaints.

The final hearing was by the Oxford Kebab House which is on Manzil Way in the medical centre.  The application was for live and recorded music and again, I think there was some confusion about what type and level of music actually required a license.  The applicant explained that the lice music would be acoustic, Persian music played in the upstairs restaurant area up to only around 11pm.  There were concerns from some residents about noise in and around the venue but we felt that these could be managed as the premises operator is experienced in such things and has a good record.  We encouraged all neighbours to keep in touch and reminded all that the license could be reviewed if it transpired there were problems at an unacceptable level.

As always, please note that 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 always the definitive document.

An unexpected dinner at Exeter College and a great presentation by the Chief Constable

I was invited at short notice to dinner at Exeter College today by a friend.  I had the great pleasure of sitting next to the Rector, Dr Frances Cairncross and we had a good discussion about Labour’s housing policies in the City including the apparent contradiction of making development difficult by insisting on huge financial contributions to other housing and the push to get more and more students out of family housing so it can be released to the rest of the market.

The dinner was extremely enjoyable and it was good to talk a bit about local politics (at their instigation) with some academic members of Exeter’s staff.  One College member was celebrating her fifth birthday as she had been born on February 29th, 20 years ago.  Actually I’d say it was her fourth as there was no leap year in 2000!

After the meal we were treated to an excellent presentation by the Thames Valley Police Chief Constable, Sara Thornton CBE QPM.  Sara had been the guest of The Rector of the College and was giving a talk to some students studying criminology.  The title of the talk was “Does it Matter if there are Fewer Police Officers in the Future?”.  I was hugely impressed at Sara’s strong sense of justice both for victim as well as the accused.  I thought her insights into what makes good Policing and how communities work were really fascinating and resonated very much with my thinking about Policing being about helping people to get it right as well as just catching and criminalising them when they get it wrong.  Sara also had great insight into targeting Policing where it will have the best effect.

Neighbourhood Forum: Student housing and the Vision for the City Centre

This was a rather informal meeting but useful nonetheless.  It was good to see quite a few students present as well as someone from Oxford University’s Accommodation office, a member of staff from Christ Church and Gordon Reid from City Centre management.

We had a good discussion about student hopes for the City Centre and the Wayfinding project that has been going on.  The signs have been tendered for and there is now a project to provide QR codes for them to give people more contextual information.  I reminded people that the excellent Mobile Oxford service from Oxford University also provides a lot of this information and that the Wayfinding project really ought to work in partnership with it.  QR codes are fine but there is so much more that mobile Oxford can do!

We then moved onto the issue of student housing.  We had a presentation about the HMO licensing scheme which was interesting and while there are many good things about it I do have concerns that it will have a drastic effect on an already short supply of essential housing for students and many other people in Oxford.  For example we heard how the council is using web sites that advertise house shares to track down and penalise landlords.  Wouldn’t it be so much better to use council resources putting adverts on those websites to educate tenants and prospective tenants about the need to check for a license.  Wouldn’t it be so much more positive to spend effort helping tenants get appropriate housing than assuming landlords are somehow bad and evil?

I’ve posted a lot about this so won’t go on about it here but I do hope that the Council will sometime soon accept that Landlords are generally good people who are genuinely trying to do the right thing, and thus focus on education and support rather than pursuit and penalisation.

Licensing and Gambling Acts Committee

We met today as part of the regular meeting cycle.  We had a useful and impressive update on licensing activities from Julian Alison, our licensing manager and it was good to have a presentation from Inspector Katy Barrow-Grint of Thames Valley Police.  Katy is the new City Centre and North Oxford inspector and I was impressed at her commitment to partnership working with the City Council as the licensing authority.  I had raised an issue with her by email this morning and she had researched it thoroughly and had an excellent answer ready for the meeting.  I was grateful for that.

Another items on the agenda was the relaxation of licensing hours for the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee in July this year. It means that on Fri 1st Jun and Sat 2nd Jun premises that are already licensed will be able to carry on those licensable activities until 1am the next morning if they currently have an earlier termination of licensable activities.

We also looked at some proposals to address some of the problems of late-night drinking.  The Government is currently consulting on a Late Night Levy (on clubs etc. to fund more policing) and Early Morning Restriction Orders (EMROs) that local authorities can use to to restrict the sale of alcohol in the whole or a part of their areas between 3am and 6am on all or some days, to address specific problems caused by the late night supply of alcohol in their areas.

The meeting took about an hour.

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.

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.

Viewing the draft plans with Simon House project workers

Viewing the draft plans with Simon House project workers

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:

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.