A meeting about Christmas light night

consultationJean Fooks and I met today with two council officers and a contractor about the events planned for 22-24 November in the City Centre to Celebrate Christmas light night.

We made quite a few points but the main one was about our fears that such a long closure of so many City Centre roads would cause utter havoc for the thousands of City Centre residents who had not been consulted about the event.  I also had not been consulted as a ward councillor which I find frankly staggering for an event of such size and disruption.  There are many disabled and inform people extremely worried that they will not be able to get to their regular places of worship on the Sunday too.

I am not very sure our points were taken very seriously and it does increasingly like councillors who are not part of the Labour administration really are not taken seriously by the paid staff and that the need to consult us as ward councillors doesn’t really seem to register.

I wish the City Council would understand that Oxford University is not just an historic backdrop against which it can do what it likes, but rather a busy and active world-leading centre of excellence in education and research.  I don’t think it is reasonable to disrupt that so comprehensively in what is the height of University term.  Without the University there would be very little of Oxford – it is one of the main wealth-creators of the City and certainly one of the biggest employers.  The City Council would do well to remember that before it tramples all over its activities with such massive disruption.

 

Planning application for St Cross College rejected

St Cross College submitted a planning application over the summer I was quick to alert residents in the immediate area about it.  It would be fair to say that the area of the application site does need some sorting out as it’s a bit of a mess at the moment but it seems to me that the St Cross planning application had some features that seemed more about ticking boxes than actually doing some appropriate development.

I worked with the St. John Street area Residents’ Association and had a very constuctive meeting with them back on 10th August to help better understand their concerns and work out how best to articulate those to the council and to the members of the West Area Planning Committee who would be determining the application.  I was impressed at how well people pulled together to get all the points in a high-impact, extremely effective summary that was delivered to the planning committee when it met.

stx

I think the image here shows how the design with very square and blocky features would just jar terribly against the existing chapel and against the roof-lines of the existing St. John Street properties.

As it turned out, despite the planning department recommending approval of this rather inappropriate proposal, most members of the West Area Planning committee voted against the proposal so it was rejected.   The application fell 6 against, 2 for (Cllrs Cook & Gotch in favour; Cllrs Van Nooijen, Tanner, Price, Canning, Clack & Jones against).  I believe this is the right result and I hope that a more suitable proposition will be forthcoming in the future so that St Cross can build the extra accommodation it badly needs without doing quite so much damage to the amenity and beauty of this sensitive part of Oxford’s historic centre.

OUSU Summer Party

ousu partyI was pleased to be invited to the (Oxford University Students Union) OUSU summer party today.  It’s an annual event that commemorates the work of the sabbatical team just coming to the end of its year of office and it certainly did that.  There were some great posters detailing all the great work that the sabbatical officers had done and there was a speech by the outgoing president, David J Townsend.  He was gracious in to only thanking the sabbatical officers but also in thanking all the permanent staff for the incredible amount of hard work they do in ensuring that OUSU really does represent and serve Oxford University’s students.

I had the chance to be introduced to Tom Rutland, the incoming Sabbatical President and look forward to working with him in the 2013-14 academic year.

Finally I want to say what a huge pleasure it has been working with Sarah Santhosham, the outgoing Vice-President for Charities & Community.  She has worked tirelessly to build working relationships with the City Council and Councillors and I’ve been hugely impressed by it all.  She has brought student volunteering along in leaps and bounds with a showcase event earlier in the year and has been once of the most effective Charities and Community Vice-Presidents I have ever known.  Thank you Sarah!

Annual Council and Mayor-making

Today was annual Council.  An inital meeting at 4.30pm in the council chamber to appoint committees for the council year, re-adopt the scheme of delegation and legally elect the civic office holders, Lord Mayor and Sheriff as well as the Deputy Lord Mayor (which a sort of pseudo Civic Office).

The exciting thing is that I was really honoured to be elected to the post of Deputy Lord Mayor!

DLM

The ceremonial part of the afternoon started at 5.30pm and I was really pleased to be able to have lots of friends and family present.  My fellow councillors Graham Jones (LD) and Elise Benjamin (Green) both made lovely speeches and it is a real honour to be able to serve as Deputy to Dee Sinclair (Lab), who is Lord Mayor for this council year.  I look forward to meeting lots of interesting people and going to lots of interesting events to represent our wonderful City.  The picture shows me in a first wearing of the chain, with my parents and my sister and brother-in-law.

Labour spreading misinformation about benefits reform

I was horrified to read the column from the Labour Leader of the City Council in my copy of “Your Oxford” (the City Council’s twice-yearly public information newspaper) as it makes some very basic errors about benefit reform and was nowhere near being balanced or even handed.

The two claims were that child benefit is going to be rolled into Universal Credit and that all claims for benefits will have to be made online under the new system. Both claims are just plain wrong and therefore in direct breach of the Code of Practice about such communications from the Department for Communities and Local Government. Paragraph 15 of that says:

“Local authorities should ensure that publicity relating to policies and proposals from
central government is balanced and factually accurate. Such publicity may set out the
local authority’s views and reasons for holding those views, but should avoid anything
likely to be perceived by readers as constituting a political statement, or being a
commentary on contentious areas of public policy.”

I am pleased to say that the Council very quickly saw the error of its ways when I raised this matter and immediately stopped distributing the “Your Oxford” newspaper. It’s an outrage that over 27,000 had already been delivered and that 60,000 had been printed.  This is going to be an awful lot of reprinting and I dread to think what it will cost the council.

I think it’s terrible that Labour continually tries to use “Your Oxford” as a party political leaflet when it should confine itself to public information given in a balanced and informative way.  Scaremongering at public expense by distributing misinformation is just outrageous.  I will continue to pursue the council to find out how much the monumental cock-up will cost the public purse!

Since the date this happened there have been a few news stories about it – The Oxford Mail, and The Oxford Times ran it and I got to appear on BBC South Today about it as well as doing piece on BBC Radio Oxford’s drive time.  My colleague Cllr Jean Fooks also had a letter in the Oxford Times about the issue.

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.

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.

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!

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.