The saga of St Clements – tweets and many emails

Some readers will know that I like to tweet (Twitter –  @tonybrett) about things going on in the council as I believe it makes for more open and accountable democracy.  As I was just an audience member at West Area Planning  I tweeted about it in some detail.  BBC Radio Oxford picked up on this and rang me at home at 0640 on Thursday morning for comments and an interview about the process.  I was happy to oblige although I must say getting a phone call at 0640 did make me think for a fleeting moment that someone must have died!  Thankfully that was not the case and I was able to explain how call-in works.

Since then there have been a lot of emails to all councillors asking us not to call in the planning application.  I am sending a standard response which I hope is explaining how things progress from here.  The decision was published on Friday morning which means there must be call in requests from 12 City Councillors if the application is to be re-determined at a meeting of the Planning Review Committee, which I chair.  At the moment I have seen five call in requests but there may be more that have not been shared with other councillors. Here’s what I’ve sent (not the picture!) :

Dear <name>,

The application has not been called in.

Some councillors have requested a call in but as far as I am aware only five have done that so far.  The application will only be called in if twelve councillors have requested that by 5pm on Monday 19th September.

It is possible for the Head of City Development to call the application in also, within that same deadline, but there is no indication of that happening at this stage.

It is not my intention to support the call in as I believe West Area committee was run fairly and properly but we must accept that it is the democratic right of other councillors to do so if they feel that’s what those they represent want them to do.

I am keeping an open mind about the acceptability or otherwise of the development as I am the chair of Planning Review Committee and will need to be able to chair a discussion openly and fairly if the call-in succeeds.

I hope this explains things at what I of course understand must be a stressful time.

Yours,

Tony Brett

West Area Planning Committee – St Clements

I attended this meeting tonight as I value seeing how others chair meetings and how discussion of planning applications proceeds.  Oscar is a good chair and it’s good to learn techniques from him.

Among others, today’s West Area Planning considered the controversial application to build student accommodation on the St. Clement’s car park. There were some very impassioned speeches from many parties and it was clear that the opposers had really brought the cavalry with some very respected planning consultants, senior folk from local businesses and from the Queen’s College.

There seemed to be several areas of discussion. These included access to Angel and Greyhound Meadow, proximity to Queens’ College’s listed Florey Building, the quality of the buildings proposed and the impact on local traders of the removal of the parking facility (in total during building and then reduced after completion).

Many councillors asked excellent questions and made very good and valid points both against and in favour of the application. Eventually there was motion to refuse planning permission, proposed by Oscar Van Nooijen (the chair) and seconded by Graham Jones (Lib Dem St. Clements’ councillor). Five voted in favour of the motion (Cllrs Jones, Benjamin, Van Nooijen, Goddard, Gotch) with four against the motion (Cllrs Price, Cook, Khan and Tanner). The motion thus passed and planning permission was refused.

The council procedures mean that there is a 2 working day period during which the decision can be called in for a second (and fresh) consideration at Planning Review Committee.

Run down and abandoned buildings on George Street

I had a call from someone the other who had noticed some buildings on George Street in a terrible state.  They are all disused shop units and I agree with the caller that they really give a terrible impression of the City Centre so I am trying to find out who owns the building(s) and if there is a way to encourage or force them to do something about the awful eyesores that they have become.   All I have found out so far is that Oxford City Council does not own this building, but planning records indicate that the ownership lays with OXAM, OMCRG, 13-14 Broad St, Oxford OX1 3BP.

Internet searches seem to reveal:

Andre Stern, Karina Sonnenberg
OMCRG Broad Street Oxford,
OX1 3AY
GBR
tel: +44 1865 248 248
fax: +44 1865 249 249

I will continue to investigate…

Is Labour neglecting the Covered Market?

This is a piece of casework about which I won’t say too much as I don’t want to identify individuals.  Stephen Brown, my ward colleague has also been involved in it.  The story is that covered market traders can have a store room in the cellars below the market and that another trader has a leak in their floor which is causing damage to equipment and stock belonging to other traders as well as the obvious Health and Safety issues around slipping and mixing water and electricity.

I am very disappointed that the City Council administration appears to have been dragging its feet over forcing the offending trader to fix this problem for an extremely long time now.  This is despite large rises in Covered Market rents that traders are expected to pay.  If they paid their rents as slowly as the City Council is fixing this problem I think there would be trouble.

All I want is for Oxford Labour to play fair and make sure the traders get safe and dry storage in return for the huge rents they pay to the City Council, the owner of the Covered Market.

Blessing Service for St. Giles’ Fair

I was invited to represent the City Council as Ward Councillor at the traditional service of blessing of St. Giles’ Fair this year as the Lord Mayor, Deputy Lord Mayor and Sheriff were all unavailable.  It was an honour to do this, accompanying Bob Wilkes, the City Rector and Vicar of St. Michael at the Northgate; and Andrew Bunch, Vicar of St. Giles’ Church on one of the rides in leading messages of welcome and a bible reading.  It was great fun to sing some hymns to the pipe organ that you can see in the picture, as well as singing some to the rather better-paced Salvation Army musicians!

Planning Review Committee: Old Road Campus

The second  Planning Review Committee that I have chaired.  This was a reconsideration of the East Area Planning Committee’s decision to grant planning permission to Oxford University to build a new research building on the Roosevelt Drive site near Old Road.  I am a member and employee of Oxford University so I had to consider carefully whether I could approach the decision with an open mind.  As I work for the central IT department of Oxford University and have nothing to do (in my work, rather than councillor, capacity) with the estates department and have no vested interest in the Medical Sciences Division I decided that although I clearly had a personal interest in the matter it was not enough to prejudice me as there are many thousands of people in our City who have some relationship or another with Oxford University.

The meeting proceeded smoothly with some very well-considered and well-presented evidence and opinions both from objectors and applicants.  The Planning Officer, Felicity Byrne presented very well and brought along a County Council Highways Officer (Martin Kraftl) to talk about the possibilities with regard to controlled parking zones.  The professional advice was extremely useful, as always.

After quite a bit of debate and careful questioning of all parties there was eventually a motion to approve the planning application with some additional conditions and that passed so the permission is granted.   The additional conditions are:

  • That the landscaping to the tree belt on Old Road includes new hedge and tree planting to the western edge, and mixed evergreens to the eastern end;
  • That the hours for deliveries during the construction of the development be controlled to avoid peak hours and the beginning of the school day;
  • That the external lighting to the campus be designed to avoid Light spillage, in order to prevent nuisance being caused to nearby residential properties;
  • That details of the maintenance regime for the attenuation tanks to be used in the drainage systems be submitted for approval by officers.

I hope these will go as far as possible in alleviating some of the concerns of the objectors.

Old Road Campus Site Visit

This is another planning application called in to Planning Review committee.  This time from East Area Planning Committee.

Quite a few councillors visited the site and we also took time to view the scene from Bickerton Road and from the garden and some rooms of a local resident’s house that she very kindly gave us access to.

This was again an extremely informative visit that I think will make sure planning review committee next week makes as informed a decision as it can.

Planning Review Committee is turning out to be quite a lot of work but I do think it is important to consider applications properly as they have a big and lasting effect on many people in our City.  The work is also enjoyable and interested and it’s an honour to be the chair of such an important committee.  I am grateful to my Labour colleagues for allowing me to have it.

Planning Review Committee: Mill Street Student Block

And so we get to the Planning Review Commitee meeting that will reconsider the planning decision made at the last West Area Committee.  This is the first Planning Review Committee meeting I’ve chaired as the first meeting happened while I was in Bonn on the twinning trip.  I was very keen to get things right so ran the meeting as carefully and inclusively as I could.

I should point out that “review” is a slightly confusing name for this committee as its job is not to review the previous decision and the process followed to reach it, but rather to take a fresh look at the planning application and make a new decision based on all the evidence presented.

All objectors had time to speak as did the applicant’s agent.  The planning officer (Murray Hancock) gave a very informative and useful report and though he was recommending approval, that is just one of the opinions we as a committee were to consider.  We had some debate among councillors and then a motion was put  seconded to refuse the application and this received almost unanimous assent.  The application was thus refused.

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Mill Street Site Visit

One of the planning applications that was approved on 13 July at West Area Planning Committee was for some accommodation for students of a local college to fit in a strip of land between the back of houses on Mill Street and the railway, just south of Oxford Station.  At West Area Planning Committee councillors and officers had largely spoken highly of it and it was given planning permission (although not unanimously).

The council has a procedure after such decisions where if 12 councillors request it the decision is “called in” and get re-determined at Planning Review Committee.  That happened in this case.  I am chair of the Planning Review Committee so decided that we should actually visit the site to see how things would look from the neighbouring properties and well as from other angles.  Quite a few members of the committee attended the visit and we were accompanied by Murray Hancock, one of the City Council’s senior planners, as well as some local residents and the agent for the applicant so he could let us onto the site.

I found the visit extremely informative and instructive and I think councillors much better equipped to made informed decisions in the actual committee meeting.

There was some controversy over the accuracy of pictures submitted and I was slightly amused at this one (although the whole issue is of course a serious one) as I think it looks like the mockup of the propsed building is floating in the air!

Electronic Committee Management

I attended a brief training session today about the new software the City Council is adopting to better manage information about committees and councillors.  I have to say I was quite impressed with it.  It should make finding things much easier for the public and it will hold us councillors better to account as it records meeting attendance too!