Back from Hols and a Temple Cowley Pools Meeting

Well I’m back and refreshed after a lovely three weeks’ camping in France where the weather was fantastic. My first council meeting was another public “consultation” about Temple Cowley Pools. It was held in the Town Hall on 17 August and ran from about 7pm to 9.30pm. There was a big panel of presenters including City Council officers and folk from MACE, the consultants the City is using to advise it about pool provision in the City. I reckon around 100 members of the public attended.

Cllr John Tanner chaired the meeting which started with 30 minutes of so of presentation from Richard Smith of MACE and several others. MACE did seem to spend a long time trying to convince the audience why they were the best for the job.

I put “consultation” in quotes because it is abundantly clear that the council officers have already decided what they will recommend to executive board (CEB) that makes the decision on 1st September. One of the executive directors, Tim Sadler, even said as much! The chair said that the 1st Sept CEB would be a “public meeting”. That will be interesting.

Here is the financial “argument” the consultants were trying to put.

After the presentations many questions were asked and raised and it was quite a useful information gathering evening, even if it felt like the answer had already been decided. A big flaw I think in the argument is that I believe the number of people living in close proximity to Temple Cowley Pools has been vastly understated. I asked MACE to check the figure. It also omits all the people who work near it on Cowley Business Park.

We had several excellent speeches and I was particularly impressed by the work Jane Alexander had done to work up a plan that would cost about £3million. MACE did at least agree to discuss that with her but I doubt it will happen before 1st September. Here’s Jane’s proposal.

Jane's vision for Temple Cowley Pools

The comments from the Cowley Marsh councillors was interesting. One of them just wanted everyone to know how good he had been to arrange the consultation meeting and the other one suggested a vote of all present about whether they wanted Temple Cowley Pools to be closed and replaced with a new facility at Blackbird Leys. The chair did that vote by show of hands at the end of the meeting and the result was about 5 in favour and almost everyone else there against. An overwhelming disagreement with what the City Council officers were recommending.

You can read much more about this at http://www.savetemplecowleypools.webs.com/

and join the Facebook Group.

Labour may have a majority administration at the moment but if they close Temple Cowley Pools I can’t see that lasting. There was talk of it not happening for another two years so I have a nasty feeling they’ll wait until just after the next local elections in 2012 to do it. We’ll see.

Luther Street Neighbours Meeting

A fascinating meeting today that showed all the signs of being extremely useful. It had people from Oxford Homeless Pathways who run O’Hanlon House, PC Paul Phillips from Thames Valley Police, The Practice Manager and a Senior Receptionist from the Luther Street Medical Centre, a housing officer from A2Dominion, that runs Luther Court, me and a county councillor for the area.

Lots of useful links were made and I felt there was much good will and willingness towards partnership working. I’m glad to have attended and made the links. I’m also extremely impressed with the breadth of services that Oxford Homeless Pathways provides for the people of Oxford.

Compulsory planning training

Today we had a 90 minute session about planning and how the law and all the various guidance works and importantly, what are and are not material considerations in making planning decisions.

We looked at a real case and how it had first been refused by officers and that decision upheld at an appeal but then on a second application with changes a new appeal was allowed by a planning inspector.

Councillors are in a difficult position because on the one hand we want to represent our constituents and decide according to their wishes but on the other hand we must abide by planning law because if we don’t we can lose appeals and planning inspectors can award costs against us if they think we’ve refused something unreasonably – and that of course is a waste of public money. Colin Cook put it nicely saying that it is the quality (i.e. is it a material consideration) of opposition rather than the quantity (300 people just not liking something) of opposition that matters in taking planning decisions. It is for this reason that the planning training is compulsory as it’s important that councillors get these decisions made as well as possible.

Central, South and West area committee

We met at the town hall this evening. It was a long meeting, appropriately enough held in the Long Room.

There were lots of members of the public present and we heard about many issues. Some residents who live on Stable Close near the railway line and sidings and staff car park were being disturbed by train diesel engines being left idling for hours (something to do with the braking system) and by shunting and very antisocial small hours of the morning. We also heard from a resident on Hamel Walk who was having trouble with an access route to his area that some developers were blocking off at times. It sounded like the City Council had failed to put a proper enforceable legal agreement in place to ensure right of access was preserved for occupiers of the social housing on Hamel Walk.

We considered several planning applications – the most interesting was the one by Oxford University which would make internal changes to the Radcliffe Camera and the Old Bodleian. It would open up some of the underground store for public access and would alter the level of the (1970s) paving in the schools quadrangle of the old Bodleian to improve level access to the building and remove the need for the unsightly temporary ramps. I had to declare a personal interest in this application as I am a senior member of The University of Oxford. As these are very well known buildings I don’t consider that I have any more or less interest in the success or failure of the planning application than any other member of the public so I did remove myself from the meeting and did vote. I did make the point that if lots of heavy vehicles were to be using the junction of Parks Road, Broad Street, Holywell Street and Catte Street then EXTREME care must be taken and enforced to ensure no nasty accidents with any of the hundreds of cyclists a day that use that junction. There was a nasty and fatal accident at that junction not long ago and I don’t want a repeat.

Full Council

Well this is always a bit of a theatrical experience. Lots of political gesturing and lots of people who are normally perfectly polite being a little less than civil. We started with announcements and the one I want to mention is the forthcoming retirement of Jude Skipp, the members’ support officer and Lord Mayor’s secretary. Jude is a wonderful woman and the council will be a poorer place without her. She started work for the City Council in 1971 – the year I was born!

We then heard some excellent addresses by members of the public about Temple Cowley Pools. Nigel Gibson and Jane Alexander spoke especially well. I was amazed to hear that 120 people had turned up to the public meeting at Temple Cowley Pools to ask for it to be saved but only about 12 turned up at the meeting in Blackbird Leys where a new pool was being proposed.

We moved on to questions from the public and 24 had been notified. Quite a few people didn’t turn up to ask their questions which I think is a shame as councillors had put time into preparing answers and the large number of questions were part of the reason the briefing note was 49 pages long!

Next up was City Executive Board recommendations. The interesting one was the new governance arrangements forced on local authorities by the previous Labour Government. We had to choose between having an elected mayor and having a “strong leader”. We chose the latter and that means the leader of the council has lots of power and can essentially hand-pick her or his cabinet. The proposal for an elected Mayor was not supported as Oxford City had voted fairly convincingly against it in a referendum in 2002.

We broke for tea then and returned after 40 minutes for members’ questions on notice. There were another 24 of these and they were used to quiz the administration further about Temple Cowley Pools. The IWCA councillor was particularly nasty to Antonia Bance and it felt like he accused her of racism and homophobia, which knowing Antonia as I do, are both ridiculous. I may disagree with her politics but she is most certainly not a racist or a homophobe. The questions I liked most was the one from Graham Jones to the leader about how much the “Your Oxford” council publication costs to distribute and circulate. I know that many of us see it as an administration propaganda device rather than being useful at actually getting to the most excluded people in our City.

The longest item in Council was the motions. The Greens in particular seem to have had their creative hats on overdrive this time. Of course with a majority administration the motions rarely change anything but they do enable open discussion of important items. The notable motions were the one to recommend to the remuneration panel that councillor allowances be frozen for the next couple of years; a rather nasty motion about senior officers’ salaries (rather embarrassing as they were all there for the discussion) and an important motion from Jean Fooks about biodiversity and applauding the work of the Oxfordshire Nature Conservation Forum.

Sadly I think the Greens won the bad behaviour award this time. The leader of the Green group trampled all over the allowed 3 minutes for speeches and had to be reprimanded by the Lord Mayor. Another Green councillor had a rather unfortunate outburst about Green attitudes to students that had to be stopped by the Lord Mayor standing to silence her.

We finished around 10pm – a long evening after a full day at work.

A new report on Temple Cowley Pools

It looks like the council officers may be having a rethink. This was published yesterday by the Council’s press office:

Temple Cowley Report

A report into the future of Temple Cowley Pools has been delayed after a draft report on the feasibility study raised a number of cost and affordability questions regarding the options.

These are being pursued with Mace, the lead consultant, however, at present the report is incomplete and not ready to be published.

In the context of the challenging financial circumstances that we find ourselves in it is vital that cost and affordability issues are clear. Only then can officers properly advise councillors on the affordability and risks of the options and place this in the overall context of the Council’s capital programme and budget.

The report was due to be discussed at Value and Performance Scrutiny yesterday (Wednesday). It was also due to be discussed at City Executive Board on 12 July.

There will be an opportunity for the scrutiny committee to consider the feasibility study and report to the City Executive Board prior to its meeting.

Tim Sadler, Executive Director, City Services, says: “We are disappointed that there has to be a delay but the financial circumstances are changing so rapidly that officers have to reassess the position carefully before advising councillors on this major strategic decision. We will also publish the feasibility study as soon as it is ready.”

Another group meeting

We met at 6pm today to discuss how we would approach everything on the agenda for Full Council on 12th July. It’s important that political groups do this so we can agree our line on the important issues at Council so that our constituents and the press get a clear and consistent message from our party.

We had a bit of discussion about how to handle the fact that our party is now part of the government. We reminded ourselves that there has not been a Lib Dem-Tory merger and that it is OK not to agree with everything the Government says or decides.

Licencing hearing: My first premises licence review

I was part of a licensing hearing today where the Police had asked the City Council to review and revoke the premises licence for R&H News on St. Clement’s as it had failed three test purchases of alcohol to under 18s, carried out by Thames Valley Police. The Police only do test purchases where there is local intelligence that there is an underage sales problem in a premises. The test purchasers are not allowed to lie or use fake ID in the premises either.

The hearing was delayed by an hour because the licence holder’s barrister was held up in a difficult case at the Magistrates’ court. After hearing the evidence both from the Police and the licence holder it became apparent to the panel that the problems were caused by the designated premises supervisor (who has to be trained and have a personal licence to sell alcohol) allowing inexperienced casual staff to sell alcohol. These people appeared not to be following proper procedures or checks before making sales.

The panel (me, Mary Clarkson and Rae Humberstone) decided that the public interest would be best served by making sure that only properly trained and qualified people were allowed to sell alcohol in this premises, which is in a sensitive area with an established problem of under-age and street drinking. We did this by imposing a condition that only personal licence holders would be allowed to sell alcohol at R&H news and various other things such as maintaining a refusals book, having a policy of challenging anyone who looks under 25, and specifying documents that can be used as age proof.

We had to balance the desire not to put local people out of business with the need to protect minors from harm by ensuring that they cannot buy alcohol. I believe our decision achieved that.

The licence holder has 21 days to appeal the decision and if he does not do so before then our decision becomes a binding part of his premises licence. If he does appeal then he can carry on operating as he is now, until the outcome of the appeal (which would be to Oxford Magistrates) is known. If the shop fails another test purchase or breaks any of the new licence conditions after they come into force then Thames Valley Police would be entirely within its rights to refer the premises back to the City Council for a further review of its premises licence.

St Ebbe’s loses lapdancing case

It’s reported today that St. Ebbe’s church as lost its appeal against the City Council’s licensing decision to allow regulated sex entertainment at the very nearby Thirst Lodge. Costs of £12,000 were awarded against the church.

I don’t have much to say about this but thought I should comment as it is in my ward. Firstly, I don’t think the City Council is here to be the moral guardian of Oxford, or its people, so should not make decisions solely on moral grounds. Secondly, I feel very sorry for both parties as they have both spent a large amount of time and money at an appeal that should probably have never happened. The original decision was entirely soundly made and entirely within the licensing guidelines and the City Council’s licensing policy. Finally, I hope that both parties can now enter into dialogue and try to understand the depth and sincerity of each other’s feelings and work out a way to coexist as neighbours as constructively as possible.

Oxford City Council Lib Dem Group Meeting

We had a good discussion about Temple Cowley Pools at the group meeting tonight. Group meetings are confidential discussions but I am happy to report, with permission, that as a new member I discovered that the group view is that we will support keeping the current pools open unless evidence arises that it is a threat to health and/or safety of the public. We will not support the construction of a competition pool on any site at this time.

Tony Brett

Liberal Democrat Campaigner and ex-Councillor