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!

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.

Lord Mayor’s Christmas Reception

SantaThis 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.

Central South and West Area Forum

This forum met today in the Town Hall and focussed on student safety issues as well as homelessness.  It was really good to have Lesley Dewhurst from Oxford Homeless Pathways present to explain to us all the good work her charity does.  We also have the new manager from the Oxford Crisis Skylight Centre to tell us about all the good work just about to start in the Old Fire Station.   Lesley produced the best handout I have seen for ages that shows really well how the homelessness services work in Oxford.  How refreshing not to be blinded by high-tech graphics.  Click on the image here to see it in its full glory!

There was a presentation about student safety from the City Council community safety ream and some useful comments from the many students present .  Student input, particularly from the OUSU Vice-President for Charities and Communities , Daniel Stone, is always particularly welcome as it can be hard to build meaningful and sustainable channels of communication between the council and the University sometimes..  I was alarmed to hear a story about a sexual assault on a student in a bus but pleased that the City Council student safety team will take up the issue with the Police and the bus operator.

Licensing and Gambling Acts Committee

This was quite a brief meeting.  It included the quarterly report of licensing activity which was presented ably and usefully as ever by Julian Alison, the City Council Licensing Manager.

Most of the meeting focussed on discussion of the government proposals to deregulate lots of forms of licensable entertainment.  While I welcome reduction of red tape I do feel the current regime does give the City Council some very useful and effective tools to make sure the right balance between people’s right to quiet enjoyment of their homes and licence-holders’ rights to run their businesses.  I don’t feel the City Council over-uses or abuses this at the moment.

In principle while I support deregulating where it is safe to do so, I am clear that local authorities do need to have sufficient legislation behind them to be able to properly balance the needs of all people in this City be they those who want to party into the small hours or those that want to sleep in the small hours so they can study or work in the morning.

I do welcome any change that will allow schools, colleges, Universities, charities etc. to be less hindered by legislation when they want to run what are essentially low-risk problem-free events but I do worry about losing control over some bigger and more problematic venues and/or events.  You can read about the proposed changes on the Department for Culture Media and Sport’s web site.

The Frideswide Civic Service

October is definitely a month of ceremony, being the start of the year for many parts of Oxford life.  The Frideswide service is an annual event that marks the founding of Oxford by St. Frideswide sometime around the 7th or 8th Century of the Common Era.  There is a good BBC article which tells you more about this.

The service is at Christ Church in the Cathedral and this year focussed on Care of Creation.  We heard three local folk interviewed by the Bishop of Dorchester.  Averil Stedeford has made her house in Headington very green and it is now quite famous.  Malcolm McCulloch, an Oxford academic talked about the green aspects of his research and Jenny Creese spoke about the Connecting Naturally project.

Part of the service involves a big procession to say prayers for St. Frideswide and also leave sprigs of rosemary on her tomb, as a mark of remembrance.

The glove ceremony and court sermon

The glove ceremony which takes place in the Dean’s drawing room at Christ Church is a symbolic event of uncertain origin. It may be that white gloves were presented to the High Court judge if there were no crimes for him to try on his visit. These days a pair of white gloves are presented to him both by the Lord Mayor of Oxford and by Oxford University. It is a very grand affair with Heads of Houses, vice-chancellor, Registrar, Proctors and more all present.

This is a very traditional event that marks the start of the legal year in Oxford. It used to mark the
annual start of the “Assizes” – the title of a visit by the a High Court Judge to dispose of criminal and civil business in the county. The Assizes were abolished by the 1971 courts act. These days High Court Judges still visit Oxford but now sit in the Crown Court. The service is now known as the court sermon and the preacher is appointed by Oxford University’s Summoner of preachers – usually a college chaplain.

These types of event don’t really do much in terms of day to day politics but they are important traditions that I think keep Oxford the great and fascinating City it is today.  I was pleased to attend with around 5 other members of the City Council.