Oxfordshire Flood Alleviation Scheme approved

On 15 July 2024, the Oxfordshire Planning and Regulatory Committee met to consider the application by the Environment Agency for the Oxfordshire Flood Alleviation Scheme (OFAS). I spoke as an objector. My main concern was that the officer’s report focussed nearly exclusively on the environmental harms, but seemed to assume that there was understanding (and agreement) about the benefits of the scheme.

Here’s what I said:

I represent the residents of Botley North Hinksey parish and South Hinksey parish. Both of these parish councils formally object to this scheme. I recognise that some residents support this scheme though.

The original partnerships among the local authorities were formed nearly a decade ago, when everyone simply agreed that flood alleviation would be a good thing.

As your report says, initially, I supported the scheme, but had concerns about the impact of construction on residents. As I’ve learned more, my concerns have broadened, deepened and increased. For example, the most affected road, the A34, lies within a the Botley AQMA – what steps will be taken to mitigate 5 years of increased pollution in an already polluted corridor?

So, as stated in your officer’s report, your responsibility is to balance the harms against the benefits and decide whether approval should be given.

The many and significant harms are clearly laid out in the officer’s excellent report.

I contend that the benefits to be delivered by this scheme are not clear from the report.

My questions to committee members are these:

How confident are you of the proven benefits of this scheme? How many properties are protected, by what means (bunds or channels), and from what exactly? If a 1 in 100 year storm only happens every hundred years, then what if the last one was in 2007? I may not understand, but it’s critical that you, the decision makers, do understand.
Large infrastructure projects have an abysmal record of delivery, making a massive risk that we wouldn’t reap the benefits. The project at the Oxford rail station and Botley Road demonstrates. How confident are members that this scheme is deliverable? What will be the impact on local areas if it is abandoned incomplete? What mitigating steps are planned? How big a risk is tolerable?
The report says objectors claim that ‘85% of measures do not depend on the channel’ and suggest an incremental approach. I think that’s preferable to a big bang. Why not implement the most protective, least damaging measures first, and then evaluate the outcome? That’s rational and reasonable, and I do not understand why that approach has been rejected by the applicants.

We still agree, as we did in the beginning, that a flood alleviation scheme is a good thing. I think the costs are tremendous though, and I urge careful balancing of the proven and likely benefits with our responsibilities to all residents regarding environmental preservation, maintaining existing infrastructure, and fiscal prudence.

Litter on the A34

(Sorry. I don’t have a photo. Driving.)

I submitted a question to the Vale Cabinet member for waste about responsibility for picking up litter and detritus on the A34.

When the agenda was published, an Oxford Mail reporter rang me to talk about it. You can see her article here: https://www.oxfordmail.co.uk/news/24446844.rubbish-decorates-a34-oxford-like-christmas-decorations/

Here is my question: Question from Cllr Debby Hallett to Cllr Mark Coleman, Cabinet Member for Environmental Services and Waste 17 July 2024

For the 13 years I’ve been a member of this council, I have tried to urge the council to improve the litter and detritus removal on the verges and in the shrubs and trees alongside the A34.

The A34 is almost always strewn with rubbish, tyres and detritus. Highway repair crews leave their cones and frames and sandbags behind. Right now, the weeds have grown up enough that it’s harder to see. (I recognise that there was recently a one-off blitz to get some control back. I am more concerned with the regular maintenance programme and less in heroics that make for good social media posts.)

What is Vale’s responsibility to residents regarding litter removal from the A34, and what is our strategy for meeting that responsibility?

Written answer:

I welcome this opportunity to clarify the responsibility of the council with regard to the
cleansing of the A34, what we currently do and our strategy for the future.

In cleansing the A34, the council is required to follow Defra’s code of practice on
litter and refuse. This means the A34 and lay-bys are cleansed to Grade A (No litter
or refuse ) and B (Predominately free of litter and refuse apart from some small
items) standards. The council is not responsible for road sign maintenance or the
cutting back of verges.

Cleansing the A34 must be done in conjunction with National Highways, who
authorise closures for road works which we take advantage of to access the road
when it is safe to do so, and OCC who are responsible for cutting back many of the
verges.

The council undertakes its cleansing responsibilities through a contract with Biffa.
The contract is output based and states the contractor should clean the roads to the
standards set out in the Litter Code of Practice.

Biffa consider it unsafe to access the verges on this road without suitable traffic
management. As the A34 is two laned, with a narrow hard shoulder, Biffa’s policy
only allows access to the verges to clear litter when the road is partially or fully
closed. When there is no planned road closure, but urgent cleansing is required,
Biffa subcontract verge cleansing to a company that have had specialist training on
working on the side of roads without lane closures.

In addition to general verge litter picking, Biffa attend to the 28 lay-bys that are on the A34. These are visited at least twice a week to empty the bins and to litter pick where it is safe to do so. The council’s Waste Team frequently monitor Biffa’s performance around the laybys, and bin servicing is found to be good. Problems only occur when bins are blocked by fly tipped items. Keep Britain Tidy undertake independent inspections against the code of practice grades, with the latest information being from February of this year. They looked at 120 locations in Vale, grading each for litter, detritus, graffiti and fly-posting. The lay-bys are frequently litter picked, and in the last survey all inspected sites across the district were found to be grade A or B for litter. The contract performance is also monitored through a set of contract measures, and an
annual performance report to Scrutiny. The report for 2023 was reviewed by Scrutiny on Monday 15 July 2024.

As part of the forthcoming waste resources and street cleansing strategy, a greater
emphasis will be placed on street cleansing and the council will look to work more
collaboratively with its partners in the county council, national highways, local groups
including parish/town councils, and voluntary organisations and community groups.
The aims of the strategy will be to:

Reduce litter through a localised, community driven approach.
Reduce fly tipping
Clean streets in partnership with, and sensitive to, local needs.

Whoever the council employs to undertake street cleansing from 2026 (when the current contract with Biffa ends) will also be required to have a collaborative approach which looks for continual improvement, and the service specifications are currently being drafted to reflect the increased emphasis required in street cleansing.

As a follow up question, I asked if this vision of Vale’s responsibility would be reflected in the emerging Corporate Plan.

Answer: No.

Your Council Tax

Dear Neighbours,

I just received my annual council tax bill. I thought it could be helpful if I explain how it’s calculated and where your money goes.

Although your monthly direct debit (well, it’s a 10 out of 12 months DD, to be exact) says Vale of White Horse District Council, only a small portion of that payment actually goes to Vale. Vale is the collector and administers the accounts, receiving payment and sending on the appropriate amounts to the County, Police, and parish.

I once asked Vale Finance officers if we could change the name of the payee on Direct Debits, because when I see Vale of White Horse in my statement, it seems like all the money goes to Vale. I thought if we could change that name, it could be clearer. But I was told that no, the name on the bank account has to be the council who serves as the administrator and pays the correct portions to other parties.

So here we go.

Your council tax is based on the value of your house in 1991. That’s right. Nothing has been revalued since then. If your house is newer, the Valuation office assesses its 1991-equivalent value to use as a council tax calculation.

My house in North Hinksey Parish is a Band D property,

County Council Tax

My band D house pays £173.40 per month (over 10 months) to the County Council. That’s an increase of £8.24 per month for the coming year.

Thames Valley Police Tax

It’s harder to find this information out. They publish this table on the website:

In the text narrative on that webpage, they explain they raised the tax this year by £15.

So let’s try my maths skills. This year is £256.28. It is a £15 increase for the coming year, which means my tax last year must’ve been £241.28. Right? Divided by 10 months, means I used to pay £24.13 per month.

My Band D house pays £25.63 per month (over 10 months) to Thames Valley Police. That’s an increase of £1.50 per month for the coming year.

Vale of White Horse Tax

Last year I paid £146.69 per month to Vale.

My Band D house pays £15.12 per month (over 10 months) to Vale of White Horse. That’s an increase of £.45 (45 pence) per month for the coming year.

Town or Parish Tax

The green table above shows the average parish precept. But I looked up the actual precepts for a Band D property, which are set by the parish council or parish meeting.

North Hinksey: £51.20, or £5.12 per month.

Wytham: £39.44 or £3.94 per month

Sunningwell: £55.33 or £5.53 per month

South Hinksey: £105.06 or £10.51 per month

In Summary

Add the monthly amounts for each of the taxing agencies: County, Police, District, parish, and you have the total.

For my annual amounts, it is: £1734.03 + £256.28 + £151.26 + £51.20 = 2192.77

For my monthly payment, then, it is: £173.40 + £25.63 + £15.12 + £5.12 = £214.27

Here is my statement:

That adds up to £2193.20, whereas I expected to be charged £2192.77. It’s down to rounding errors on my part.

Here is my calc:

And that’s how it works.

Best wishes, and kind regards,

Debby

Safeguarding the Raleigh Park Fen

On the evening of 25 Jan 23, Stephen Parkinson (Chair of Friends of Raleigh Park) and I (your local councillor) addressed the Vale Planning Committee about our concerns regarding the site at the top of Yarnells Hill, whose owners wanted to build 3 new dwellings.

At committee meetings, we only get 3 minutes to express ourselves, so I usually write to them ahead of time. This was no different. Here’s what my letter said.

Officers remind us that the NPPF says decisions must be made in accordance with the Development Plan, unless material considerations indicate otherwise. I contend that the high risk of irrevocable damage to the irreplaceable habitat adjoining the site is just such material consideration; the NPPF says irreplaceable sites like this must be safeguarded.

Vale is not in a situation where these three luxury homes are needed. We have currently over a 6 year supply of housing land. So our strategy for providing housing is working, and these extra windfall houses are not necessary to provide the housing numbers we have committed to.

The proposed mitigation must be monitored. Even if monitoring works and notes a failure of the mitigation, it will be after the fact and the harm will already be done. This is the nature of anything that requires monitoring to succeed.

Vale’s Countryside officer doesn’t support the application. Oxford City does not support this application.

This application has been set to come to committee three times. Each time, local people and concerned ecological professionals trying to preserve Raleigh Park’s ancient fen launch into action, presenting hard evidence to committee members to urge you to vote to refuse this development. For whatever reasons, planners have removed this application from the agenda at the last minute three times. Once it was to gain ‘independent’ paid consultants’ opinion regarding the ecological risk – this was when they hired a company, Aspect Ecology, to help them out (the same company that also provided evidence to government in support of HS2). Once it was during the planning meeting itself, when it was clear the agenda could not be completed (I don’t think officers included this instance in their report). Once, most recently, was when it was recognised that there had been a problem with consultation procedures. Each time, so many people’s hard work had gone into preparing arguments about why this application should be refused. Each time, the officers took away that evidence to bring back more arguments why this development should be allowed. Why is that? Is this council a culture where we are unable to revisit decisions in light of new evidence and come to a different conclusion? A large handful of ecological experts have all pointed out in detail what can go wrong, how the fen is endangered. It’s our duty to safeguard the irreplaceable habitat.

Please read Dr Parkinson’s assessment of the mitigations. He provides a summary of what several other ecologists have determined.

Over the years that I’ve been trying to protect the wildlife and natural resources up in this corner of Botley, we’ve seen about a dozen million pound homes built in this area, one site was turned from a single family home into multiple flats (Little Dene), and the whole of the development by Bovis of 136 homes went ahead. Badgers have been forced out of their habitats. Most recently a site just opposite was approved for two new huge houses. (That site is interesting; the decision to grant permission came early, in spite of officers telling me it was being considered alongside this one, due to the similarity in ecological concerns. It also adjoins Raleigh Park, but it is brownfield where the current site is green field.) Local wildlife now have only this small corner of Yarnells Hill available for foraging and shelter, adjacent to Green Belt, adjacent to an irreplaceable habitat in Raleigh Park.

But the main this is that this is a planning decision to be taken “on balance”. Does the benefit outweigh the risk of harm? A windfall of 3 houses vs damage to an irreplaceable habitat that it is our duty to protect. How can we rely on a planning condition that requires enforcement to protect what’s irreplaceable?

You can see the meeting and hear what everyone said on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pkA4ZiPfIoA

Planning Committee voted unanimously to refuse the application. I’m very grateful to everyone who helped in this effort.

Life after Oxfordshire Plan 2050

Earlier this month, the five local authorities in Oxfordshire announced they were unable to agree the way forward for determining housing numbers in the Oxfordshire Plan 2050, and that work on the Plan would therefore end. That was disappointing to those of us who had worked for so long to make it a success.

In the aftermath of that decision, people are wondering what comes next. Here’s a short list:

Vale’s work is now focused on our emerging Joint Local Plan (joint with SODC). Where before, we were waiting for OxPlan50 to inform our housing need numbers, we will now do that work for ourselves. that work is underway.
The most recent OxPlan50 consultation, which finished in October 2021, told us that the public valued a lot of the policies being mooted for that plan, especially the environmental policies, and more especially, those to do with sustainable construction and transport. We can use them, and the evidence gathered so far, in our Joint Local Plan.
One really great thing about the OxPlan50 was the vision, which each council approved. We will be going ahead with our plan, and take into account that Vision. (See the whole Vision for sustainable Oxfordshire in my DropBox here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/arigeo06o6zygdt/Oxfordshire%20Plan%20Vision.pdf?dl=0)

Here’s a summary of the Strategic Vision for Oxfordshire:

All of the housing we committed to in our Local Plan 2031 is still going forward, including the 2200 we agreed to provide to help meet Oxford’s housing needs (that they are unable to provide on their own).

Personally, I am determined to do all I can to make this emerging Joint Local Plan all that we need it to be for our districts for the next 20 years: the right numbers of the right types of net-zero carbon houses in the right sustainable places, the jobs and employment locations that ensure this area’s economic health, and whatever else we can do to look after our residents’ and workers’ well-being.

Historical housing delivery in Oxfordshire

In recent month, everyone’s been talking about how many houses we’re going to need to build in Oxfordshire between now and 2050. Now that the OxPlan50 project has stopped, the work to determine those needs reverts to the 5 local planning authorities: Cherwell, Oxford City, South Oxfordshire, Vale of white Horse, West Oxfordshire.

I explored the councils historical housing delivery numbers. I took a look at the ten years to see how housing delivery is going in the local authorities. Figures are from the published Authority Monitoring reports.

Since about 2016, local authorities have been delivering to a very high housing figure, which was derived from the Strategic Housing Marketing assessment (SHMA) that came forward as part of the Oxfordshire Growth Deal. That deal required ambitious growth targets beyond anything ever seen here before.

Cherwell

Oxford City

South Oxfordshire

Vale of White Horse

West Oxfordshire

Back into blogging!

I used to post here on my blog a lot; when I was an opposition councillor I had a lot to oppose!

I discovered in May 2019, when we won control of Vale, and I was appointed to Cabinet, life was too busy and I was too full of new responsibilities to find time to blog. Also, I needed to find the boundary between things that are confidential and things I could blog about. I feel I’m there (after three years I should hope so!)

My intention is a weekly or fortnightly blog post to tell you about something of interest that I’ve encountered.

My letter to Planning Committee re: West Way 30 flats

Here’s the letter I sent to members of the planning committee before their meeting on 2nd Dec 2020 to consider the West Way application for 30 extra flats, none affordable, and with no parking provision.

Dear colleagues,

I’m emailing the members and substitutes of the Planning Committee, mostly due to my doubt that I can fit my message into the time I’m allowed in the meeting.
There are a couple of good reasons to refuse this application:

First, this is over development of the site, in terms of both number of storeys and density. The proposal is non-compliant with the Botley SPD (part of Vale’s development plan), which limits any building height to 8 storeys. I see that West Way Community Concern has comprehensively covered that topic in their note to you. For convenience, I’ve attached it here.

Second, this application is non-compliant with our affordable housing policy. Core Policy 24 requires 35% affordable housing on all developments over 10 dwellings. This application is for 30 units, so policy compliance would be 35% of that, or 10.5 affordable units. Policy allows a monetary payment in lieu of a fractional amount. So, to be policy compliant, the applicant would provide 10 affordable units plus a financial contribution (for the .5 united of the 10.5 required) to affordable housing elsewhere in the district.
There is already permitted consent on this site for 120 flats with zero affordable units. The developer previously agreed to pay £2m in lieu of the expected 42 onsite units, which gives a value per affordable-unit-not-provided-on-site of about £48k. So if the developer were to negotiate a similar obligation for this application, £48K for 10.5 units would be £500,000 as a payment in lieu of onsite units. But there is nothing on offer here.

Those two material considerations should be enough for you to vote to refuse.

However, if you are still minded to approve it:
Please require the following conditions:

All residential units, student rooms and hotel rooms are intended to be car-free. In the permitted application, the developer recognised that this would likely be problematic for the local area, so they agreed to provide funding for a Controlled Parking Zone in nearby roads. Adding 30 more flats would surely lead to a greater need for funding for a wider area of CPZ.
Cycle parking does not meet County’s current standards, as you’ve read in the officer’s report. Officers concluded that since the permitted application doesn’t have the required number of cycle parking spaces, it was fair to not require it for this application either. I urge you to add a condition that there will be safe and secure cycle parking provision to County’s current standard for all the residences to be built under this permission.

And finally, in reading the officer’s report, I had these questions…

CCG asked for s106 monies. Do you understand the reasons why it isn’t getting any for the GP surgery?
Leisure asked for s106 money. Do you understand the reasons for not giving any to local leisure facilities?
Do you understand where the hundreds of residents in this development can go to find open green space amenity? Is that OK in your view?
The registered providers don’t feel these flats are suitable for family living. Do you disagree or agree with that?

I hope you vote to refuse. If you refuse, the applicant still has permission for the 120 original market flats with no parking and inadequate cycle parking. The Botley community doesn’t want to have a worse deal than they have now.

Thanks for listening. See you at the meeting.

Regards,

Debby

Committee voted to refuse the application for reasons of parking, mass and density and lack of affordable housing.

What’s wrong with the Planning for the Future White paper?

We all agree — the country needs more houses that people can afford.

Government thinks that the solution is to build more houses faster. They think the main impediment to this is the slow speed of the current planning system. So they are proposing changes to take away some of the local decision making. One of their previous ideas was to allow disused office space to be turned into housing without need for planning permission. That led to greedy developers across the country producing tiny box-like flats where people are crammed into spaces with no windows. Govt recently changed its mind and now requires habitable space to have natural light. The planning system adds value; it makes spaces liveable for human beings.

Let’s look at the problem in a systematic way. In any system, when you don’t get the outcome you expect, you can assess three things:

Make sure you are doing things right. Govt says local planning authorities aren’t giving permissions fast enough. This assumes faster movement through the planning system will bring more houses that people can afford.
Make sure you are doing the right things. Govt says there should be more schemes allowed under permitted development, assuming that if developers have a free hand in what they build, unencumbered by the local planning authorities’ processes, there will be more houses that people can afford.
How do we decide what is right? Make sure you are aiming at the right thing. Govt thinks that developers are the answer to the problem of not enough houses that people can afford.

I think Govt is aiming at the wrong target.

Developers are in the business of making as much profit as possible though the houses they sell. That’s OK; it’s what they do.

Our objective in Vale is to provide more houses that people can afford. We have a policy that requires a percentage of each major development to be ‘affordable’. (The Govt definition of ‘affordable’ is a house available at 80% or less of market price. In Vale, that still isn’t affordable to a person on a median income, so even the best intentioned policy is ineffective. Today we must think in terms of ‘houses that people can afford’.) But developers claim the policy lessens their profits. They’re right; it does.
So developers sit on permitted plans, because they know land values and therefore house prices will continue to rise, and they will build their houses when the profits are high.

I’m not distracted by the harm that is forecast to come from the various proposals in Govt’s Planning for the Future. (But there is a lot of harm.) I’m focussed on how the overall proposed solution doesn’t solve the problem.

Government thinks that the reason we don’t have enough affordable houses is that developers don’t get planning permission fast enough to build the number of houses we need for prices to come down to an affordable level. However, I think that expecting profit-hungry developers to solve our problem of a shortage of affordable housing on ever increasing land value is doomed to fail because it’s the wrong solution.

It’s the wrong solution. It makes no sense to say that the way to provide more houses that people can afford is to rely on for-profit developers to provide them for us.

My speech to my motion on LPP2

At the Vale full council meeting on 17 July 2019, I tabled a motion about the problems with LPP2. You can read it here.

Vale has a duty to cooperate with our neighbouring councils. In our Local Plan, this shows up as Vale’s commitment to take on a portion of Oxford’s Objectively Assessed Need that they are unable to meet for themselves. That’s completely reasonable.

What isn’t reasonable is for us to have to commit to exact numbers of houses to help meet Oxford’s unmet need, BEFORE that need has been established by examination and adoption of their Local Plan.

Instead, our Inspector accepted the unmet housing need figures the Growth Board came up with, and said that the 2200 houses for Vale are a ‘working assumption’ and should be revisited once Oxford’s need is established. The inspector was silent on how we should do that. But it really matters, because once this LPP2 is adopted, the allocated sites will come forward in planning applications, and these Green Belt sites will be gone forever.

Letters to the Inspectors and the Inspectorate have argued that Oxford’s need must be determined prior to allocating sites in the Green Belt land for houses to meet Oxford’s need. Replies have been illogical. Cherwell’s inspector says that’s just the way planning works; examinations are scheduled when they come forward. The inspectorate says each local plan is handled independently; there’s no higher view for planning these hearings.

But the Local Plans aren’t independent. Cooperation requires sensible ways of working. We need to determine the need before adopting a radical plan to meet that need. That hasn’t been done.

In order to remove land from the Green Belt, there must be exceptional circumstances (beyond just a need for housing). Consider that the inspector of Vale’s LPP2 said that Oxford’s need for 2200 ‘mostly social rent houses’ was the exceptional circumstance. I’m shocked at the lack of rational thinking that demonstrates. How can that be the exceptional circumstances for such a serious decision, when the actual need hasn’t yet been established?

Council needs advice from the Minister as to how he envisions this working out. If, as is expected, Oxford’s need is drastically reduced with a recalculation, it could well be that we need do nothing to help – that our Local Plan Part 1 had enough houses located close to Oxford to meet their unmet need. But we cannot know that until Oxford’s evidence and their own ability to deliver the housing they need is assessed.