Licensing and Gambling Acts Committee special meeting

We met today for the sole purpose of signing off the revised statement of licensing policy.  It had been to all of the Area Committees but we still had quite a lot of discussion from two councillors who represent areas to the East of the City Centre about how they would like off-licences included in the special saturation policy (area pictured) for East Oxford.  Unfortunately councils can’t change the law on when SSPs are applicable!

saturation.JPGA picture was painted of chaos and bedlam on Cowley Road with people drinking in the streets and then getting even more drunk in pubs there.  I must say, as someone who cycles or walks home along Cowley Road practically every day and at all hours of the day and night I don’t recognise that picture at all.  I don’t deny there are problems in East Oxford but I hardly think closing off licences is going to help.  The two councillors that reported all this trouble live in Headington and Iffley Village and I can’t help wondering how much they actually see Cowley Road late at night.  I of course don’t doubt their integrity and I know there have been a few nasty incidents recently but I do think the issues we see in Cowley Road are sometimes rather exaggerated.

What worried me most was that one member of the committee thought that good work had been done by a panel that refused a recent off-licence application for a new premises in Oxford only to have it granted on appeal by the Oxford Magistrates.  I’m afraid that if panels refuse things with absolutely no evidence directly attributable to the site in question, and no objection from the Police, then that’s not really good work in my book.  The licence will almost certainly get granted on appeal and runs the real risk of Magistrates (quite rightly) awarding costs against the City Council for behaving unreasonably in its decision.  Councillors sitting on licensing panels MUST make decisions based on evidence and evidence alone.  Licensing panel member do nobody any good at all if we don’t base decisions on evidence, especially the council-tax paying residents of Oxford, as decisions will not stand up to appeal and costs awarded against the Council will just come from council tax-payers money meaning other services have to suffer.

After all that discussion we did eventually agree to the licensing policy.

Grays Road Store informal premises licence review

alcohol.jpgThis was interesting as it was about a premises licence that had previously been before a licensing panel for review in 2010.  That panel had resolved to revoke the licence but the shop owners had appealed to the Oxford Magistrates to reconsider the decision (as is their right).  It appears that the problems had arisen following the passing away of the original Designated Premises Supervisor as the deceased’s family were continuing to run the store and were making mistakes, I suspect partly due to grieving the loss of their relative and partly due to inexperience.

Thames Valley Police had been working with the shops owners and the owners had clearly undertaken a lot of training and employed professional licensing experts to train them in running an off-licence operation properly, with particular focus on avoiding selling alcohol to minors.  Oxford Magistrates had asked the matter to be referred back to a licensing panel for consideration and opinion.

After some discussion and questioning  the shop owners and operators managed to come to agreement on a set of operating conditions with the Thames Valley Police licensing officer so the panel (of which I was part) was then able to direct the City Council Solicitor to advise the Magistrates that we thought the licence could probably safely remain in force now and invite the Magistrates to consider that in their decision.  It is of course open to the Magistrates to pursue any course they think suitable including revoking the licence completely or allowing it to stay in force with no extra conditions.  I hope neither of those things happens!

Please note this post does not form an official record of proceedings and should not be treated as such.  The meeting was not a formal hearing as such and Oxford Magistrates will be invited to make the final decision.

Full Council

We had quite a good meeting today.  We had some addresses by members of the public about disability access as well as more about Temple Cowley Pools.  It’s such a shame the Labour administration seems so hell-bent on depriving the Temple Cowley and East Oxford of such a well-loved and well-used community facility but I do rather feel the battle is lost now.  I was rather disappointed to hear one speaker make entirely inappropriate remarks about the probity of the leader of the Council.

We moved through executive board recommendations, most of which were not controversial.  I am disappointed that City Council is going to start charging for parking in quite a few well-used places including those where people park to take their children to football practice etc. and I hope this won’t decrease participation.  I do understand the need to balance the budget though.  I was also disappointed to see that the report proposes putting in mains-powered ticket machines rather than solar-powered ones, simply because the latter don’t contain a heater to keep the tickets dry.  Surely there must be a better way!

council-24-jan.jpgWe then moved into the questions on notice, starting with  a question from a Green councillor about the terrible human rights abuses happening in Iran at the moment.  Lots of members of the public were in the gallery to hear this question which is why it was taken first.  All present agreed that the council should send a strong message of support to those oppressed and a strong message of disapproval to the Iranian authorities.  The international links committee was not the right way to do it but the leader said he would do what was appropriate, as did the Lord Mayor.

I asked a question about why the “save East Oxford” banner had been targeted for enforcement by the planning department.  Colin Cook, the portfolio holder, said it had been done without his knowledge but was the result of a complaint from a member of the public and because it was a listed building it had received high priority.

I also asked a question about the threatened closure to the public of the waste and recycling centre at Redbridge and the risk of increased flytipping.  I received a somewhat reassuring response from John Tanner, the portfolio holder, that he (along with the other Oxfordshire districts) had had a very robust discussion with the County Council and were hoping to reach some agreement on keeping Redbridge and other centres open.  It wasn’t a promise but it felt like a move in the right direction. The County is already offering money to the districts to cover increased fly-tipping clear-up cost but personally I’d rather see that money used keeping the tip open!

After the questions we had a break for tea and I had an extremely useful chat with the chair of licensing (I’m the vice chair) about a few issues.

After tea we moved to the motions, the usual political grandstanding that doesn’t achieve a huge amount and is probably the ugliest part of being a councillor.  I thought the most significant motion was the one about tuition fees.  It was by a Labour Councillor.  Mark Mills, one of our group, put an amendment that pointed out some of the positive things that are happening around education funding which I actually thought was rather helpful.  Sadly the Labour and Green groups just mocked it and called it an apology for the coalition’s actions on this (which I have already said I think are terrible).

I then stood up and said I was quite willing to say I was ashamed of what the government had done to higher education funding, just as I’m sure the Labour members were ashamed of at least some of what their party’s leadership had done in government. That’s what happens when you’re in a party that is in government!  I urged us all to step back and to consider that although the cuts were very bad, I firmly believe that we as councillors have a duty to encourage our young people to take up educational opportunities and to encourage them, where appropriate, into higher education, not to scare them off with political grandstanding.  I received a round of applause for this and even a nice email from a Labour councillor today about it.  After the amendment fell the Labour group asked for a named vote on the substantive motion.  This happened.  Lib Dem group mostly abstained but I voted in favour of the motion.  It passed as the Labour group voted for it and they have a majority.

The meeting finished around 9pm.

The saga of the street lights on Magdalen Bridge

magdalenbridge-postcard.jpgBack in early December 2010 I noticed that none of the street lamps along the North side of Magdalen Bridge was working.  This isn’t strictly in my ward but I cycle home that way every day and it’s still City Centre.  I saw a potential safety issue with cyclists having to pull out to turn right at the Plain and the risk of drivers of buses, cars, vans etc. not seeing them, especially if the cyclists were dressed in dark clothes and not using lights.  Sadly that still happens far more often than it should.  Many students also report feeling unsafe walking over the bridge and the darkness was not going to help that!

I made a report about the problem to the County Council street light repair service on 9th December. That service is normally excellent and things get repaired in a few days, almost always less than a week.  I got a response the same day saying a 24hr job had been raised.

On 13th December I got an update saying the street light repair contractors had attended and found a power supply fault so had passed the issue onto Scottish and Southern Energy the body responsible for dealing with such issues.  SSE is contracted to repair such faults in 20 working days.  I asked if this could be given priority as it affected so many lights and on 14th December the County Council said they would try to pull some strings.

On 12th January 2011 I reminded the County Council that the 20 working days were now up (count them yourself if you don’t believe me!).  Unusually I got no reply so sent a reminder on 17th January.  I got a reply quickly that said, among other things:

“Guaranteed Standards of Performance for street lighting cable fault repairs became a statutory requirement from 01 October 2010. We will therefore claim penalty payments from SSE at £10 a day, for every day over 20 working days the fault is outstanding.”

I was also given the contact details for a person at SSE and the job reference so I could complain directly.  I did so, as did the Bursar of a nearby College.  I got a “not me guv” type of reply yesterday helpfully giving the contact details of the Oxford Depot manager for SSE as well as the engineer dealing with the issue. But still no progress!

Earlier in the week, while I was dealing with the order for Cherwell Student Newspaper for our department I mentioned this issue to the person I was dealing with.  He passed it on to one of the Cherwell journalists who has today pursued SSE about the issue.  I think the word “journalist” must have worked better than the word “councillor” because the job has now magically been programmed!

I have had an email this afternoon from the County Council saying:

“I have been told by SSE that there is a major cable fault on the bridge, which will require a power shutdown affecting businesses in the area (such as Sainsbury’s). The work has been programmed for next Thursday to allow the relevant businesses to be informed.”

So there we are.  Some casework is easy, some takes ages and far too much chasing!  I am amused that a journalist managed to achieve, in about half an hour, more than I have achieved in a month with this issue! Well done Cherwell.  The £10/day fine for missing the service deadline does seem a rather paltry amount and is hardly going to make contractors take much notice of the20-day limit.  I wonder why it is set so low.

Watch out for working lights next Thursday (27th Jan)!  Update:  There is now an article in Cherwell about this.

Labour’s planning department trying to silence objectors?

There was an interesting story in the press today about how the Labour administration of Oxford City Council is trying to use its powers of planning enforcement to get a large poster objecting to the St. Clements’ Car park redevelopment removed.  The poster is on the side of a listed building without consent so it is right that it shouldn’t be there but I can’t help finding it odd that the planning department is being so heavy-handed with this when it simply just doesn’t do so much other enforcement work.  The poster was put up with the permission of the occupiers of the building so it does seem rather unfair (if not illegal) of the City Council to try to force the poster to be taken down.

Last night I had an email (it went to all councillors and our local MP so I’m assuming it’s not very private!) which put the matter rather well, I thought:

“I read in the Oxford Times that a sign placed on Finders Keepers Estate Agents protesting against the development of the St Clements’ Car Park has been ordered to be removed by the council planning department as it allegedly infringes the status of the building as a listed property and contravenes advertising laws.

I myself phoned the planning department some months ago about the profusion of satellite dishes appearing in the East Oxford conservation area. I was told by a planning officer that this was a low priority and that the funds were not available to deal with the ‘60 or more’ dishes in the area of which the planning officer was aware, all of which infringed planning law. He also told me that his practise was to send in some cases a threatening letter to the property owner, but if the dish was not removed to do nothing thereafter.

Should we assume that following the threatening letter from the planning department about this sign (and assuming the sign is not removed)  the planning department will then do nothing, as it does with other minor infractions of local planning law ? Or does the council believe that the sign protesting the St Clements Car Park is a special case deserving of unusual resources from the taxpayer to remove ?”

The correspondent may well ask!  I certainly intend to.  It seems a bit of a conflict that the planning department is effectively using resources to stifle very wide public dissent to a scheme that it itself is supporting.  It doesn’t feel very democratic to me.

Your views welcome.   You can also look at the Save St.Clements website.

LibDem Group Meeting

We met today in the town hall and had a good presentation from Helen Bishop and Karen Tarbox about the new customer service centre and the merging of current customer service provision.  I hope this project works well and hope that sufficient attention is paid to expectation management in the new system as I believe that’s key to good customer service.  I also requested that councillors be able to have a read-only view of the job tracking system in use so that we can be more helpful to constituents when chasing up issues and hopefully more helpful to the customer services officers.

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We discussed a few other things in the group meeting including how we we handle next week’s City Executive Board meeting and the forthcoming Full Council meeting on 24th January.It was a good and positive meeting.

Roads Maintenance and Housing Repairs

 More from the City Council as of 5pm Monday 20th Dec

Roads Maintenance

Two bulk gritters, complete with snow ploughs, have been working throughout the day on our priority gritting routes in the City to enable the majority of bus routes to continue to operate.

In addition to the two main gritting routes, additional snowploughs and gritters have been deployed across the City to deal with localised problems.

The Direct Services Streetscene teams have been re-deployed to clear snow and apply grit to high footfall and shopping areas across the City including the City Centre, Summertown, Headington, Cowley Road and other local shopping areas such as Templar Road, Cherwell Drive, St Nicholas Road, Blackbird Leys Road and Underhill Circus.

Resources have also been deployed to clear snow and ice from the approaches to health centres including Manzil Way and Dunnock Way.

We are working closely with the County Council to manage our salt supplies and arrangements are in place to supplement our supplies from the County’s large stock at Drayton.

Our gritters will commence work at 8pm and will work through the night to cover major routes

Housing Repairs

We are currently dealing with a large number of frozen or burst water pipes and loss of heating in Council properties. Our first priority is the elderly and vulnerable but our aim is to get to everyone within our Service Standard of 24 hours for an emergency call.

Our emergency service is being run using 4×4 vehicles and we have escalation plans in place should the snow arrive this evening.

Recycling and Waste update from Oxford City Council

I don’t normally put service announcements in this blog but we are in extreme weather at the moment so please see below:

images.jpgSubject to there being no more significant snowfall overnight, Oxford City Council  plans  to run the following Recycling and Waste service:

For those who live on major bus routes that have been gritted and whose normal residual or food waste collection day is Tuesday we intend to run a reduced service where possible.

The following services are suspended:

  • garden waste
  • bulky waste (including white goods and fridge freezers)
  • bin and box deliveries
  • co-mingled recycling

We will be running a limited trade waste collection service within the city centre and major retail areas where possible. We will also, where accessible, provide a collection service to flats.

We will collect clinical waste where possible.

For collections the rest of the week we will confirm the afternoon on the day before they are due to take place whether or not our crews will go out – for instance the decision on whether crews go out on Wednesday will be made on Tuesday afternoon.

Due to the anticipated build up of extra waste in the next few days, where collections have been missed, a reasonable amount of side waste can be put out on collection days. This should be placed out as follows:

  • general/residual waste – black sacks only
  • recycling – either in recycling or cardboard box or clear bags
  • food waste – in extra biodegradable bags or, if not available, please place in normal household waste.

My thoughts on the coalition vote on tuition fees

The short version of this post is that I think the decision stinks and I am ashamed of the way the most senior members of the Lib Dems have seemingly ignored party policy and reneged on their election pledges.  I am staggered.  Just this week I have been really upset to hear young people I know having lost all their aspirations to go to University because the sort of debt figures they are facing are numbers they cannot even consider, however much later in life and higher in salary they might have to pay them off.

I represent a ward that is about 65% students and I am feeling like they have all been terribly let down by my party.  I have considered resigning, and indeed Richard Huzzey, who used to be a City Councillor for Holywell Ward until his academic career took him abroad, had indeed done so.  He’s written an excellent article about it in Lib Dem Voice.

I could leave the Lib Dems over this but all that would achieve is effectively terminating any representation I can offer for students, and the other people that live in Carfax, to Oxford City Council.  As an independent I would immediately have virtually no voice, no committee seats and no power.  It would make me far less effective as a representative of those who elected me.  We may not like it, but that’s the way party groups work in local authorities.  It’s the law!  I stood as a LibDem in 2010 and was elected by nearly 1000 people who I believe expected me to represent them as a LibDem for four years. I don’t intend to renege on that promise even if my party’s MPs have reneged on theirs. I certainly won’t be joining any other parties as if people in Carfax ward had wanted a councillor from another party I guess they would have voted for one.

To those who say that we’re in  a coalition so we can’t win all the battles and pursue everything in our manifesto, that’s true but  not pursuing a policy is one thing – that’s called abstention.
Pursuing an entirely opposite and contrary policy is entirely different – that’s called selling out and reneging on promises.  The first is pragmatic, the second is shameful.

I can entirely sympathise with those who feel the Lib Dem government ministers are not representing them at the moment, and indeed I don’t think they are representing me, but I do feel that I still have a duty to carry on representing my constituents as a Lib Dem so will no be resigning from the party at this stage.  From the inside of the party I will of course continue to put as much pressure as I can on Clegg, Cable and the others who voted for this disastrous attack on Higher Education.  None of them would currently be getting my vote in a leadership election.

Remember: The Government Lib Dems may have let you (and me) down but I promise to carrying on striving to represent you and your views to Oxford City Council to the best of my ability and in line with what I and my party promised in May 2010.

Green councillors supporting disruption to students’ studies

radcliffe_camera_9209.jpgI’ve been getting more and more worried about the Oxford Green Party.  Today I was horrified to see the contents of a letter from all of Oxford’s Green councillors.

One paragraph reads:  “We are proud to stand alongside those Oxford students and pupils who marched peacefully two weeks ago on the NUS/UCU demo in London, and who this week marched for their rights, and then undertook the occupation in Oxford.”

I am indeed proud to stand alongside those who marched peacefully, and I am indeed ashamed of and entirely opposed to what my party’s senior MPs are doing with student funding in the coalition, but I am much more ashamed of all those who think it’s OK to practically vandalise one of Oxford’s most historic buildings, the Radcliffe Camera, and to seriously disrupt those students who are trying to work extremely hard to get their degrees.  Did you see the dancing on the tables?  I have never seen such blatant disrespect of such an important and historical resource.  It’s sheer hypocrisy to protest about student fees and at the same time disrupt the work and lives of many students who just want to get on with studying so they can get their degrees.  As you can see from the comments on the YouTube video linked above I appear not to be alone in that view.

It’s nothing short of scandalous that Oxford Greens seem to be supporting this sort of behaviour.