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.

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.

Opening RADECS 2013

This evening was a fairly brief event for me in that I was invited to the Town Hall to the opening drinks reception of RADECS 2013, a large conference that took place in Oxford this year. It is the The 22nd European Conference on Radiation and its Effects on Components and Systems. My brief was to give a bit of history on the Town Hall and the Civic office of Lord Mayor. Did you know that The present Town Hall is the third on the site and its foundation stone was laid in 1893 by the Mayor Thomas Lucas and without mention of the first builder – a Mr A Chappell of Lambeth – who was declared bankrupt in October 1893. The present design by Henry T Hare was built by Messrs Parnell and son of Rugby for £94,116 (note, Oxford’s average house price is now £356,299) . The official opening of the Town Hall was on Wednesday 12 May 1897, by HRH the Prince of Wales Edward VII.

The Lord Mayor of Oxford is a very old tradition, with the first recorded names going right back to the 12th century. There is a long unbroken line of Mayors of Oxford right up until 1962 when the dignity of Lord Mayor was granted to Oxford by Queen Elizabeth ll. In Oxford, The Lord Mayor represents the City at civic and ceremonial events and spends a great deal of time promoting the City, the key initiatives of the City Council and supporting a wide range of Oxford based voluntary and other organisations.

The Lord Mayor generally carries out in excess of 300 engagements each year. These engagements cover a wide spectrum of events from high profile Royal visits and leading the City’s annual Remembrance Sunday service, to small community group meetings and charity events. The Lord Mayor also chairs meetings of full council.

Topping out the Weston Library

I attended the topping-out ceremony at the Weston Library today, which will emerge from the shell of the refurbished New Bodleian to form a wonderful special collections Library late in 2014. I was invited as ward councillor and was I think the only member of the City Council there. There was an excellent speech by the Vice Chancellor or Oxford University, Professor Andrew Hamilton and he and Dr Sarah Thomas, Bodley’s Librarian unveiled the commemoration stone to mark the event.

Hamilton spoke about how important it is to keep Universities like Oxford moving forward and developing and he said how important the philanthropy of donors is to such progress. He thanked the City Council, via me, for all it support and work with the University in our City, which I think was pretty gracious given how the whole project was slowed down by the City’s refusal to allow a book depository to be built in Osney, thus necessitating its construction in Swindon. 7 million books were moved there from the New Bodleian before the refurbishment to form the Weston Library could start!

I hugely look forward to seeing the finished product, and hopefully the regeneration of the East end of Broad Street including sorting out the awful traffic lights there that don’t even have a pedestrian phase!

New Dining Hall and Lounge for Jewish students and community at the Chabad House of Oxford

I was invited earlier this week to the Grand Opening ceremony of the New Dining Hall and Lounge for Jewish students and community at the Chabad House of Oxford (on Cowley Road in East Oxford) so I went along. I was very impressed by what I saw – a house of welcome and resources for Jewish students and community. Clearly a lot of work has gone on as the dining area and the lounge are now positively sparkling! There were some good speeches including from the Lord Mayor of Oxford and the President of OUSU and it was good to hear from the families of those who had made the work possible by their kind donations.

I was quite moved by the story from the son of Reb Yitzchok Dovid Tajtelbaum, who had survived the holocaust and done so much to rebuild Jewish communities in so many places.
It’s so good that Oxford has proper provision for students and community members of so many faiths and this Chabad House is just another example of that.

It’s great to see too that Rabbi Eli has his own blog.

OUSU Summer Party

I 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!

Priced Out!

This evening I went to the first meeting in Oxford of Priced Out. Priced out UK is a group that campaigns for affordable housing for all. I was struck at how many people were sharing the same or similar stories about appalling charges made by some unscrupulous letting agents and also stories of it being so hard to get a property in Oxford at all, as either tenant or owner.

There were some useful people there from both City and County councils and we had a great discussion about causes of the problem, particularly in Oxford and ways that the problem might be eased. Oxford is very short on land and is tightly bordered by Green Belt land and it seems rents just go up and up even in the current economic climate and people will still pay them. I see among my colleagues any younger than about 35 people really struggling to buy a home in Oxford and inevitably having to live further afield and then also having to cope with all the expense of commuting into Oxford to work.

We talked also about innovating schemes like encouraging letting agencies to cut back on ancillary fees in return for recognition as quality agents. We also talked about how many would appreciate longer tenancy terms (perhaps if they are starting families of have children of school age) and how the return for that might be a bit of a change in legislation so that delinquent tenants (those that stop paying) could be less of a burden on landlords. The whole meeting was constructive and helpful and I thank Duncan Stott for organising it, Saint Columba’s URC (my church, incidentally) for hosting it and Tim Lund for letting me use the above picture that he took.

Duncan has done some great work with Priced Out (as well as being a good Lib Dem friend) and I wish him and the campaign every success. If you share its aims and/or are yourself facing some of the problems it is trying address the please do take a look at its website at http://www.pricedout.org.uk and follow it on twitter at @pricedoutuk

Widening Participation: Murder in the cloisters

I was invited to a dinner today that was part of the “Murder in the Cloisters” widening participation event run by Oxford University’s Widening Participation Team. This team works with state school students aged 9-16 (Year 5 to Year 11) in Oxfordshire, Milton Keynes and Buckinghamshire to help them understand what they could gain from further or higher education, and what type of study might suit them best. I was pleased to see that it is not just about recruiting young people to Oxford University but about widening participation in all Higher Education

“Murder is the Cloisters” is a residential event for Year 8 and Year 9 students. This three day subject taster event allows students to experience Law, Classics and Chemistry in a university setting. Working with actors (the Oxford Imps), the students interrogate ‘suspects’, examine evidence and work together in their groups to solve a murder. Students stay in Pembroke College and eat in the dining hall giving them a real taste for what life at University is like. The dinner was good and there was some great acting designed to get the young people to think and work together to gather evidence and process it. I was so engrossed that I had to go back the next day to find out the solution to the murder mystery!

I think widening participation activity is incredibly important, particularly in Oxford where we have two world class Universities but have historically struggled with below-average educational attainment at secondary and primary level. I think this sort of event can work wonders to boost confidence and aspiration in Oxford’s young people and really encourage them to be the best they can be at school so they can then access higher education and all the life opportunities that offers.

The widening participation team also offers the Oxford Young Ambassadors scheme, aimed at young people who have little or no family history of Higher Education, and the Compass Young Carers programme, aimed at children and young people with caring responsibilities at home.

All of this work is fantastic at enabling young people in our area to make informed decisions about their future education and life and I think it’s an amazing initiative. It’s certainly something I’ll keep in mind with my work as a governor at Oxford Spires Academy.

How to check for an Oxford HMO licence or application

A few people have asked me how to check a property before signing a rental contact to occupy it as sharers. You can check quite easily via the City Council website but clicking this link:

http://www.oxford.gov.uk/PageRender/decB/Licensing_applications_search_occw.htm

You will arrive at the search start page where you need to click the blue “I accept” button which you find by scrolling down a bit through the text. You can read the guidance notes there if you wish. Once you’ve clicked the accept button you get taken to the search page where you can just type in the start of a street address. If you are searching for an existing licence rather than application it’s important to click the radio button to choose licences (circled in red) rather than applications otherwise you won’t find what you want.

I’ve chosen 15 Regent Street just as a random address that I know is an HMO. Once you’ve hit the search button you should get a results screen that looks like this (without the red circle):

If you click on “HMO Details” (circled in red) you’ll get another screen that shows you other things like how many rooms there are and how many occupants the license allows. These are important things to check. It is also very important to check that the license has not expired as this system will show those too. If it will expire during the period of your proposed tenancy then ask the letting agent or landlord what they are going to do about that.

If you cannot find a license for a property you are considering renting then I would advise you to contact the City Council for advice before signing a contract or paying any sort of deposit or holding fee. Don’t let an agency or a landlord bully you into rushing into anything as if there is no HMO license you will not be protected by the City Council and could be signing a lease for a dangerous or otherwise defective property. The landlord and letting agent will also be acting illegally if they let a property that does not have a license. I should say that if you don’t find a property on this search it may be because the application or license is still in processing. It doesn’t automatically mean the landlord or letting agent is doing anything wrong but it does mean you should check.

Phone: 01865 249811
Email: hmos@oxford.gov.uk
109 St Aldate’s Chambers,
St Aldate’s,
Oxford,
OX1 1DS

I hope people find this useful – it’s applicable to all those looking to share houses, not just students. Remember though that being included on the public access HMO register no more makes a landlord or letting agent good than not being included on it makes a landlord or letting agent bad.

Central South and West Area Forum – student volunteering and community engagement

This meeting was held in the town hall and was quite well attended given the horrible wet and cold weather. It was good to have people from OUSU and from the Oxford Hub student volunteering centre.

The meeting was chaired by Councillor Mark Mills and we fairly quickly broke into two groups – one to discuss student volunteering and one to discuss student community engagement. It became apparent quite quickly that there are large overlaps between the two. We talked about how students and more permanent residents can coexist constructively in the community and I was interested to hear about the work student voulunteers have been doing with elderly folk who live in the City Centre and often don’t feel able to go out. Quite a lot of these people are in my ward, Carfax, so this was of particular interest to me.

One thing that was picked up was that students are still having problems with Houses of Multiple Occupation, particularly around landlords and letting agents being slow to do repairs. I said I would post instructions about how to check if a property is registered as an HMO and see who is the licence holder so have done so in a separate blog post.

The meeting finished about 9pm and was a useful exchange of contacts, ideas and views and hopefully will enable more student engagement and volunteering.

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.”

There 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.

Tony Brett

Liberal Democrat Campaigner and ex-Councillor