Oxford University Liberal Democrats resurgent!

( a guest post by Layla Morgan)

Last week marked the end of the Freshers Fair at Oxford University. Held in the Examination School on the High Street, this three day event marked a resurgence for the OULD as hundreds of students signed up to receive emails and join the oldest political society in Oxford.

OULD at Freshers' FairThe brightly coloured stall, adorned with a brand new banner attracted a steady stream of students asking for more information or to ask about their latest campaigns. Beers mats with ‘I Love Me’ were given away to promote the Body Confidence Campaign started by Jo Swinson MP, now a minister for Equality. The Bears for Belarus campaign which fights for greater Democracy in Belarus also received a lot of attention. OULD are also firmly behind the OU for Obama campaign and will be supporting Obama’s re-election into November. With strong links already between the Liberal Democrats and the Democrats in the USA, this is a natural extension to a flourishing partnership between the parties.

This is the first year that Lib Dem HQ has employed a full time Liberal Youth officer, Katherine Pugh (katherine.Pugh@libdems.org.uk) who was able to send out subsidised freshers packs across the country. She was been working hard to connect the Liberal Youth wing of the party (see www.liberalyouth.org for more info) to local parties and central campaigns to enhance our campaigning capabilities for the 2013 local elections.

Co-Chair of OULD Rio Jones commented,  “I am really pleased to see so many people sign up this year. It is the best it has been since entering coalition. We plan to add an extra dimension to the club this year by doing more campaigning and offering training for our members. It is going to be a great year”

If you would like more information about the OULD, contact Rio or his counterpart Mairi Robertson. You can visit their facebook page or email them at co-chairs@oxfordlibdems.org.uk.

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.

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!

Union Street Student Accommodation permission granted and subsequent councillor abuse

Just a quick post to say that planning permission was granted at yesterday’s planning review committee with an extra condition that lighting be installed on the access route – this was made a grampian condition meaning that if it can’t be met (e.g. if the landowner of the access route, the county council in this case, refuses to allow lighting) then the permission will fall.  I chaired the meeting and it passed off without any bad behaviour at all.

I would say more about the meeting but I have been subjected to an extremely foul email today from one of the Governors of East Oxford Primary School so I want to deal with that first. It contained:

“…Tony was seated at the head of the table, a place/position which he should not have taken, especially from what he did early by making such statements. Everything looked pre-planned beautifully. How was he even allowed in the room is beyond me? … Furthermore I must add how ashamed I am, that I have to live in a city, where people (councillors) like these have powers, and misuse them however they please. Undermining the greater good in our communities, especially for our school. Dismissing what’s important and siding with something that would do more harm than good. Personally I don’t know how they got their seats in the first place, or why they gave the go ahead on such an important matter, obviously this was an under hand job, maybe bribery was used?…

<name removed by me> (parent governor E.O.P.S)“

I won’t name the sender here but the email went to all 48 members of Oxford City Council so I guess it will get out eventually.  It really is not nice being accused of accepting a bribe and I must say, if the sender had been listening at the meeting the sender would have noticed that I recorded an abstention on the vote.  There was one other abstention, one against and 6 in favour of the application so it would have been granted however I voted and I don’t think anyone can reasonably accuse me of taking sides – I ran the meeting fairly and objectively as I hope those present will testify!

The meeting was not helped either by the Oxford Mail publishing an inflammatory story that same day that tried to pitch me against the residents by using a photo of Union Street onto which I had been superimposed.  I consider that photo to have been extremely misleading and unhelpful to the planning process.  If you click the picture here to enlarge it you’ll see around the border of my head how badly the journalists have pasted my image onto the scene.

Nice comments from Oxford University Student Union

Working with and engaging with our Universities, particularly the student body, is always a challenge.  Not because anyone makes it difficult but I think because students come and go so quickly and because the senior people in the Students’ unions change every year.  This academic year, Oxford University Student Union (OUSU) is lucky to have Daniel Stone (Dan) as its Vice President (Charities and Community).  He works tirelessly to try to bring Students and City together and it’s great as a City Councillor to have a meaningful way to interface with the many students who live in Carfax Ward, the residents of which I represent!

Dan recently published a nice column in the Oxford Student, the official newspaper of OUSU, that couldn’t really have been nicer.  You should be able to read it if you click on it here but if not, here’s the middle paragraph:

“City Councillors are here to represent students too!  There are City Council wards running through the centre of Oxford and extending out through Jericho, Summertown and over the Magdalen Bridge.  We’re lucky to have a fantastic group of Councillors, many of whom were former students and consequently want to engage with the student population as much as possible.  But it’s up to us to speak and make our voices heard”

Thanks Dan – it’s a pleasure to be able to serve you and the students of Oxford!

Do read the whole article if you can. Click it to enlarge it.

National Landlords Association Oxford Branch Meeting

This was an interesting meeting, attended by about 20 of Oxford’s decent and honest landlords as well as Ian Wright, the City Council Service Manager that covers HMOs and Ken Staunton, the NLA Head of Regions.

Ken first spoke about the NLA Landlord accreditation scheme which looks like is a really useful thing.  I am impressed at how much information it provides and how it has a requirement for Continual Professional Development for Landlords.  That’s very important in the continual changing regulatory landscape in which the business has to operate these days.

There was then a talk by Ian Wright from the City Council about the additional HMO registration scheme.  Ian did a good job of explaining what I think is a completely over-the top scheme that is crippling the HMO market.  It’s not Ian’s fault – he’s just doing what the Labour Administration of Oxford City Council tell him but there really are a lot of charges and I was appalled to hear that the council is demanding extra works on 97% of properties where licenses are being applied for.  In most cases tenants and landlords were entirely happy before the council interfered.  Ian did show some slides of some awful cases where council intervention is clearly needed and welcome but I suspect none of those applied to to the good and honest landlords present last night.  There was also a list given of successful prosecutions.  I was a bit surprised that the names of all those convicted were included and didn’t really understand why Ian included a case where someone had been imprisoned after performing an illegal eviction.  That case was nothing to do with HMO licensing even though that was the subject of Ian’s talk.

There was a lot of dicussion and confusion about the change to HMO registration requirements coming in January 2012 and the Article 4 direction on planning which removes the permitted development right to change a property from C3 (domestic household) to C4 (HMO with 3-6 unrelated sharers) coming in February 2012.  It’s fascinating to me that the council seems to act as if Landlords are nasty evildoers trying to extort money out of tenants while spending as little as possible whereas what I saw was a bunch of honest professionals trying to run their business in an honest a way as possible.  There is clearly a lot of confusion about the ridiculous amount over over-regulation the Labour council is trying to pile onto the HMO market in Oxford.  I find it really hard to understand as Oxford is depsperately short of housing and HMOs provide a vital part of the housing mix.  If Landlords are persecuted and saddled with ridiculous amounts of expense for work that nobody wants then that will just get passed on in increased rents and Oxford’s housing (and homelessness) problems will jut get worse.  I wish Labour would just accept that being a landlord is just an honest business in the same that running a taxi, a shop, or a bar is.

The meeting took about 2 hours and was extremely interesting.

Back from Holiday to a tirade of anti-student vitriol

I’m just back from a week away and disgusted by some of the emails I have received about a planning application in East Oxford. Clearly there is a campaign going on and a standard email has been circulated. I quote some phrases repeated in many of them:

“from my many years of experience of the growing numbers of students in the East Oxford area they are incapable of talking quietly or without using offensive language in every sentence that leaves their mouths along with continuously playing loud music.”

“The student population is increasing to unbearable amounts already in this area and they do not need any further encouragement or welcoming into our community because they bring nothing positive.”

“Our community is being destroyed and controlled by the universities and their students.”

Well I’m sorry but I completely disagree with all of that.  It is full of gross generalisations and is frankly offensive to the many people in Oxford who are students or staff at either of its world-class Universities.  To say students bring nothing positive is utter nonsense – how do people think local business remain viable and vibrant?  I don’t just mean bars either – I mean buses, restaurants, supermarkets, local shops and much more.  How many people in Oxford would become unemployed if out two Universities disappeared? I would, as would the leader of the council and many thousands more local people.  The other thing to consider is that if purpose-built student accommodation is provided then this reduces pressure on more conventional housing that could then be used for families and other social groupings.  In principle I think purpose-built student accommodation is a vital part of the accommodation mix in Oxford and the more of it we can have (so long as it is appropriate in scale, site etc.) the more we will reduce the massive housing pressure Oxford suffers.

We have students in our street and they are mostly quiet, considerate and well-spoken.  Occasionally we hear them late at night and occasionally they hear us.  That’s a consequence of living in a crowded City with densely built accommodation – for me it’s a fair swap for all the wonderful things there are about Oxford.  At last night’s Central South and West area forum there were many students present with positive contributions to make and showing genuine interest for local issues of concern.  I was extremely impressed that OUSU, the Oxford University Student Union, is organising an-on street collection for the new Crisis Skylight Centre in Oxford this weekend.  Students do many good things for our City and many volunteer for all sorts of community outreach.  You can read lots about this on the site of the Oxford Hub.

On this particular planning application I will retain an open mind  – there may be reasons to refuse it if it gets called in and there may not.  As chair of Planning Review Committee I’ll have to study it more carefully.  But I can say this without any doubt:  I will not be making any decision in either direction just because this is accommodation intended for students.  To do so would show complete disregard for planning law and would be frankly stupid.

The language I have read in emails sounds horribly like the racism of the 60s, the homophobia of the 80s and the sexism of the 70s.  I wonder – would people oppose an afro-Caribbean resource and advice centre, or an LGBT resource and advice centre, on that site with such gross and frankly disgusting generalisations.  They might find themselves on the wrong side of the law if they did.

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.

A useful meeting about HMO licensing

I had a meeting today with Tim Sadler, Executive Director City Services, and Ian Wright, Health Development Service Manager in Environmental Development.  My colleagues Cllr Mark Mills and Cllr John Goddard also attended.  The subject of the meeting was to discuss the problems and unintended consequences that are occurring with the City-wide licensing of Houses of Multiple Occupation (HMOs).

The discussion centred around the inflexibility of the Amenities and Facilities guide.  I made a statement in full council about one of these issues a while back and two more have since arisen:

In the first case we have a landlord who owns a few some modern executive houses (built in 2003/4) and has six tenants in each.  They have plenty of bathrooms and toilets and a huge kitchen/lounge communal area with which the tenants are all happy.  The problem is that for six tenants the dreaded document insists on an extra sink (or a sink and a dishwasher).  The tenants are happy with one sink and don’t want either another sink or a dishwasher as this would reduce the cupboard space available to them for storage of their own personal food.  The council is however insisting this work be done against the wishes both of the tenants and the landlord.  This seems bonkers to me and only creates expense for the landlord that will inevitably be passed to the tenants in the next rent rise.  See the ground floor plan on the left.

The second case is even more bizarre.  This is another house with six tenants.  It has two bathrooms, each of which contain a toilet.  You’d think that would be fine as the guide says that for 1-4 tenants one bathroom that contains a toilet is sufficient.  But no – for six people if you have two bathrooms that both contain a toilet you also have to have a separate toilet.  I understand that toiled has now been fitted after the issue was forced by the council –  in a room that opens onto the kitchen, as one of the options the council suggested.  The tenants hate it and never use it because of the smell into the kitchen and obvious hygiene issue.   The work the council has imposed again strikes me as a waste of money and another inevitable rent rise.  I really don’t see why the house can’t be treated as two groups of three people with a toilet-containing bathroom for each group.

My real issue with all this – both these cases, and the one I talked about at full council – is that these are groups of consenting and non-vulnerable adults sharing a house in a responsible and neighbourly way, with good relationships with their landlords.  One of them even said to me: “As a landlord it is my policy to provide almost anything my tenants ask for.  They are, after all, my customers.  Thus, for example, if one tells me that their mattress is uncomfortable I don’t even check it myself.  If they say it is uncomfortable…it is; so I change it.   A quick phone call to my supplier who delivers and takes away the old one is easy and not very expensive.  It makes good business sense to treat tenants well.  I even turned out to fix a leak on Christmas Day.  The tenants really do not want these things that Council officers are forcing us to do.”

The council is not protecting tenants in these cases – it is making problems and rent rises when there were no problems and everyone was happy.  This is absolutely classic Labour behaviour:  We’ll decide what’s best for you and make sure you have it – even if you don’t want it! This attempt to impose a one-size fits all policy on a complex situation where one set of guidelines clearly does not fit all situations is just causing unnecessary expense and waste for landlords and rent rises for tenants in a not exactly financially buoyant time of the economic cycle.  Tenancies come in many different forms – some are room by room, some are whole-house, some have individual locks on rooms, some don’t.

I am of course all in favour of pursuing landlords who are negligent, don’t keep their properties in good repair and treat their tenants badly.  These are not examples of that though – these tenants are financially capable working people who choose to live in high quality HMOs because they can’t afford to live in other way in Oxford with housing being in such short supply and so expensive.  The landlords are providing essential accommodation for the people of Oxford and running decent, honest businesses doing it.  In many cases this is to fund retirement – which seems entirely reasonable to me.  If the landlords were not treating the tenants well they would move out!

There are two ends of the HMO spectrum in Oxford.  At one end you have cases like those I’ve mentioned and at the other end you have run-down, damp, cold, overcrowded properties with vulnerable tenants with few choices.  In my mind THESE are the places where council intervention is welcome and essential.  But it really is not welcome or needed when landlord and tenants were happy and everything was fine – it is not the job of the council to disrupt perfectly good and safe arrangements between good landlords and non-vulnerable tenants.  The Labour council should be arguing about numbers of cockroaches in some properties – not numbers of sinks or toilets in places where everyone is happy!

This was put rather well by one of the landlords at the last full council also:

“I would ask that the council focus on the highest risk properties and are not deflected by technical breaches of guidelines. That they use scarce resources and strong enforcement powers to protect vulnerable tenants and do not waste their energies on nitpicking …. Please avoid the temptation to consider being a landlord as a life choice of the more unsavoury end of the spectrum.”

She is absolutely right! I really want this council to accept that decent, honest landlords actually provide vital housing for many of Oxford’s students and young professionals.  These good landlords want the bad landlords brought to account just as much as the council and we councillors do.  The problem is that it feels like the council is currently treating all landlords like the enemy – when the council writes to them for example wouldn’t a few sentences in the letter acknowledging the important contribution they are making to the City’s housing needs be quite useful?  It might achieve a much better relationship and much better outcomes.

Both of the landlords quoted above have told me they are seriously considering getting out of the business because it is too much hassle.  Neither is young and both are providing good quality accommodation that Oxford desperately needs.  I think it would be a real tragedy if the Labour council’s actions pushed these and others out of what is actually an essential business in Oxford thereby removing even more housing stock for young professionals and students who are an absolutely vital part of the economy of our City.