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OxLEP SEP refresh consultation

I sent in my response today. You have until Friday to respond. 

1. How does the SEP capture the main characteristics of the Oxfordshire economy, its challenges and opportunities?

I read this week that the workforce population is set to decline over the next decades.

The ambitious jobs growth projection seems to mean people living elsewhere will come to work in Oxfordshire. With roads at or over capacity, what plan are there to increase capacity?

The AONB and Green Belt are constraints on development.

I don’t think the SEP does enough to tackle or even recognize these two main constraints: roads and other infrastructure to support planned development, and an environmental sustainability aspect. I get that your focus is economic growth. But in a sustainable world, you need partners who look out for the environmental and social aspects of sustainability. I think that’s lacking in your plan and approach.

We have a problem here in Vale with home affordability. If we continue to attract low paying jobs (eg, warehouse, retail, services industries, other unskilled jobs) that don’t pay enough for people to be able to afford to live here, then we need to adapt housing policies to meet the needs of the workers.

2. People – are the right priorities and commitments included? If not, what is missing?

Young people and workers on average wages are being priced out. I don’t see anything in these plans to address this problem. IMO, this is the main challenge we face in the county.

If the working age population is declining, then presumably the other age brackets are growing (since population is forecast to grow). As people live longer and need places to live, what sort of growth strategy considers what’s needed for them? Could a plan for housing for older people contribute to growth and jobs here?

Should we consider whether some parts of Oxfordshire are full? Oxford City, for instance, is unable to meet its housing needs, yet continues to commit its available land to jobs growth. This short term focus on growth at all costs is guaranteeing longer-term problems with impassable roads, and ever-out-of-reach-to-theaverage-worker housing prices.

How will we educate our children when our population has doubled? Many families already cannot find a school place locally. This would seem to be a clear criteria for People.

3. Place – are the right priorities and commitments included? If not, what is missing?

I don’t see a priority to protecting what you’ve called our ‘key asset’, our natural environment.

As I said before, if your remit is to plan for sustainable growth, then it’s an ethical question that would be well answered by proactive partnering with residents and organisations that have views on environmental and social aspects of sustainability. For example, what if all development had a carbon-neutral requirement? Wouldn’t principles like that actually contribute to the world-leading reputation you aspire to?

It would be helpful (even if not mandatory) to have environmental assessments in place for the various bits of your plans. How else do you know about their viability?

4. Enterprise – are the right priorities and commitments included? If not, what is missing?

How will you measure jobs growth? Should there be a categorisation of jobs?

We may say we want jobs across the spectrum of pay grades, jobs for all skill levels and qualifications. But if we continue to create more low paying jobs, where will those workers live?

I think it serves the population well to promote balanced growth, as I’ve said before. If we do all we can to encourage young people to get training to quality them for jobs they’ll find personally and financially rewarding, and then provide those sorts of jobs, and homes they can rent or buy, we’ll have something to point to with pride.  

Also as technology or other conditions make certain jobs obsolete, it would serve the population if we had a scheme that provided re-training to mature workers who need to change jobs.

5. Connectivity – are the right priorities and commitments included? If not, what is missing?

Our bus services are being cut back, and at the same time housing developments are planned for sites that allow more reliance on public transport. Our cycle tracks are below standard. Trains are SRO, and there’s no link between Wantage and Oxford. If we are serious about promoting non-car travel, we need higher priority for high-quality public transport.

With the planned growth in jobs and houses in the Wantage and Grove area, where’s the plan for a rail station there?

6. Does the SEP articulate clearly the roles and responsibilities of OxLEP?

As far as I can see, OxLEP is unaccountable to the people,. Without any way for the people whose lives and jobs are affected by what OxLEP decides to have any input into the decisions made, there’s bound to be strain. Meetings are private; the public have no role in the way it’s set up and led today.

As I said elsewhere, I think that since it was set up like this by government, it’s understandable.

But I feel there is a moral and ethical responsibility to be more inclusive, collaborative and accountable to better serve the residents of this county. Since that isn’t legislated, it has to come from the principles of the key players, or the ‘corporate culture’. In some sense, it’s even more important, simply from the fact that it’s not required but something to point to as ‘the way it should be done’.  

25 May 2016

Question to Cllr Dickson about the delayed Village Halls survey

At the Vale full council meeting on 11 May 16, Cabinet member for Leisure, Cllr Charlotte Dickson, was away. Today she provided a written answer to the question submitted by Cllr Judy Roberts. 

(A few months ago, the leader of council, Cllr Matthew Barber, assured the Vale’s Scrutiny Committee that there had been no loss of performance or service delivery by the planning team due to their ongoing recruitment and retention challenges.)

Question

Could the Cabinet member please explain the reasons for the delay in publication of the Village and Community Halls Survey, which was due in July 2015?

Written answer

The surveys of community and village halls formed part of the work that consultants carried out on the joint playing pitch strategy and associated work. We have received draft reports from the consultants and, as reported to Council in July 2015, we were on track to complete by the end of 2015. 

However, due to the demands of the Local Plan Examination, both in preparation and participation, during last autumn and winter/spring this year, a review of the work has been delayed. 

This work is now re-programmed for late spring/summer.

Question to Cllr Dickson about Abbey Meadows pool project

At the Vale full council meeting on 11 May 16, Cabinet member for Leisure, Cllr Charlotte Dickson, was away. Today she provided a written answer to the question submitted by Cllr Helen Pighills. 

(I’m told the complete re-do of the Hinksey Outdoor pool, including adding a beach area to make it more accessible, cost about £300,000. I’m trying to verify that. Abingdon residents have formally complained that Cabinet haven’t done what they promised.)

Question

In the consultation on Abbey Meadows the public were overwhelmingly in support of Scenario A: ‘A place to swim and play’

The consultation leaflet stated ‘We would aim to carry out essential repairs to the swimming pool and changing rooms’.

Furthermore under ‘Improvements we can make’, the leaflet listed ‘Repair the outdoor swimming pool’ with ‘refurbish the changing rooms’ appearing in the ‘Additional improvements we will consider’.

Why then does the recently issued cabinet decision include refurbishment of the changing rooms with no mention of essential repairs to and upgrading of the pool including its ageing pool tank and heating/filtration system?

Written answer

We listened to the consultation feedback and are working to deliver Scenario A – a place to swim and play. The outdoor pool is opening to the public on Saturday 28 May and officers worked with GLL over the winter to improve the heating system, undertake an industrial clean and paint the pool tanks. We have an ongoing maintenance budget to carry out any other essential works – as we committed to in the consultation leaflet. 

The pool is clearly important to residents, which is why we are keeping it open. The changing rooms are an integral part of the pool complex and, therefore, need to meet health and safety standards. As the changing rooms are often the first area that people use and last area they leave, it is vital that they provide a pleasant environment. A refurbished changing facility will also provide a much more attractive approach to the complex, which in turn will enhance the whole area.

Refurbishing the changing rooms was ranked as the second most popular improvement by people taking part in the consultation, so there is clearly public support for this to happen, which is why we’ve selected it as a priority.

As well as doing what we can to refurbish the pool over the past winter, officers are working to procure contractors for the play area and building work improvements in order for these works to take place next winter in an attempt to minimise the disruption caused to residents and visitors.

However, we are also aware that there are thousands of visitors to Abbey Meadow every year who do not use the pool, and we have taken them into account. One of the key aspirations of the project is to improve the wider Abbey Meadow area so that it attracts more visitors throughout the year. To completely refurbish the pool would cost in excess of £520,000, not including costs associated with survey work and professional design fees. This would not leave any funding for changes elsewhere in Abbey Meadow, which will be key to bringing more people to the area throughout the year. Given the available budget, we believe that it is fairer, along with keeping the pool open and refurbishing the changing rooms, to carry out as many of the other top ten improvements throughout Abbey Meadow as possible for the thousands of visitors who spend time in this area.

We are actively seeking additional funding so that we can achieve some of the other suggestions. We have already built into the budget some £45,000 of section 106 money from the Old Goal development earmarked for play equipment and this will allow the available budget to go further.

Enforcement Team latest

This week I met up with the Planning Enforcement team manager, Emma Turner. We talked about lots of things, but two particular items I thought would interest quite a few people. (I took a photo of part of their performance point.)

1. Improving how planning conditions are used. 

2. Increasing their proaction on monitoring adherence to planning conditions.

Emma and her team are working on standardising the wording of conditions that get applied to planning permissions. This is to help prevent unenforceable conditions being added with little consideration of exactly what’s being required. In the heat of a planning committee meeting, it’s understandable that members feel they need to come up with conditions to make the scheme supportable. But too often the conditions that get attached like this aren’t well thought through and can eventually be unenforceable. 

They’re also preparing to group conditions into a helpful order on the planning decision notice, so that it’s clearer to developers which conditions need to be completed before development begins, before first occupation or other milestones. This is all to help developers and the public to understand the details of conditions on planning permissions. 

The other main thing is to increase their ability to be proactive. Until recently theirs has been a reactive service, primarily responding when potential planning breaches are reported to them. Now they are making plans to proactively monitor some of the larger permissions. This is a good step forward that I know the public will welcome. 

If you would like to have Emma come to speak to your parish council about the work they do in planning enforcement, contact me. I told her I could probably arrange some speaking gigs. 🙂

Cllr Murray Q&A on cost of Local Plan 2031 so far

Question (from me)

The Cabinet has promised to take care of my interests across the Vale with enterprise, energy and efficiency. I don’t know what they mean by ‘enterprise’. ‘Energy’ isn’t enough if it doesn’t produce a good result. Tonight I’m interested in ‘efficiency’. Could the Cabinet member please report the total costs so far to create the emerging Local Plan? Please include all costs: officers, consultants, travel & food, phone calls, consultation, printing and distribution, and everything else that we have invested so far in producing our emerging Local Plan.

Answer

The cost of production of the Local Plan consumes almost all of the Vale’s diligent and hard working planning policy team’s financial budget, and for the last 3 years this has been £3,214,174 in total.

(Well, is that what I asked? I don’t think so. Work on the Local Plan has been going on at least since the 2011 elections. Before that was before my time, so who knows. The past three years mostly was spent waiting for the Examination and responding to inspectors questions. I expect the real answer would be more than twice what he’s supplied. Next stop: Finance department.)

Question to Cllr Murray about out of date planning policies 

Your Lib Dem Councillors work hard to get our questions and motion for council meetings just right. 

At the May Vale council meeting, only one Cabinet member was there to answer our question. Cllr Mike Murray wasn’t there, and we had two questions for him. He gave written replies. 

If it weren’t so infuriating, it would be laughable. 

Here’s one (from Emily Smith):

Question
The planning department’s Statement of Community Involvement defines what the public can expect in term of communications and consultations from planning. It’s so out of date it lists Dr Evan Harris as our MP to be consulted. Why hasn’t this important policy document been kept up to date?

Answer

The Vale Local Development Scheme which was published in January 2016 and has since that time been available to view on the Vale’s website identifies the timetable for production of the updated Statement of Community Involvement.

Pardon?

Vale commits to multiple unitary authorities 

At the Vale council meeting on 11 May members debated a motion tabled by the leader of the council, Matthew Barber. 

This Council supports the proposal by district council leaders for the abolition of existing councils and the creation of new local unitary councils for Oxfordshire. 

Furthermore this Council welcomes the appointment of Pricewaterhouse Coopers to examine all options ahead of a public consultation this summer.

Lib Dems reminded council that we just last month spent £50,000 to commission a study that’s still under way. The consultants haven’t produced their report yet. 

In debate, Lib Dems pointed out that the wording in this motion,  “new unitary councils” eliminates from consideration a single unitary authority. That’s one of the options in the ongoing study, but this motion calls for council to only support the district leaders’ dream of multiple authorities. Of course a single unitary authority is the option preferred by our county council colleagues. 

Tory debaters all missed this key point. One speaker, Cllr Howell, focused on how we need to take a leadership position. No one was saying we shouldn’t do that. We were saying this is a premature commitment that should be managed according to the plan we already have in place, and not rushed in ahead of any evidence or public consultation. 

Another Tory speaker, Cllr Sandy Lovatt, admitted he didn’t “understand what the opposition was on about.” He stated it was only a motion supporting the consultants selection and summer consultation. Cllr Lovatt needs to read more carefully and pay closer attention. He missed the point that Cllr Barber was eliminating Oxfordhire County Council’s preferred option. Cllr Lovatt is a 3-hatter, so he is a town and county councillor in addition to a Vale councillor. In short, Cllr Lovatt voted with the several district council leaders, and against his own county council’s preferred approach to a unitary authority. How awkward.  (Their other member who is also a County councillor, Cllr Yvonne Constance, was absent from the Vale council meeting. Handily.)

Nutshell: the Tories all voted for this motion, which eliminates one of the four options currently being studied, before there’s been any evidence published and without listening to the public’s views. 

All Tories voted for the motion. All of your Lib Dem councillors voted against this poor decision.

West Way – amended plans submitted

Mace have submitted amended plans for West Way. Consultation is now open for these changed plans and continues through 2 Jun 16. 

15 Jun 16 is still the intended date for planning committee to decide if it should be approved. Mark your calendar!

You can see the new plans on the Vale website page here: http://www.whitehorsedc.gov.uk/java/support/Main.jsp?MODULE=ApplicationDetails&REF=P16%2FV0246%2FFUL

My objection to the West Way planning application

I’ve just filed my formal objection to the West Way planning application. Here’s what I’ve said:

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The future of West Way

14 April 2016

Do you remember how Cinderella’s ugly stepsisters did everything they could to cram their big feet into the delicate glass slipper, hoping that they would win the hand of the handsome prince? They cut off their own toes and heels to try to cheat their way to riches.

Vale and its sales partner Doric/Mace seek to cram hundreds of student dormitory and hotel rooms into several 6 to 9 storey buildings in this local service centre in Botley. These plans provide fewer shops than we have now, in order to fit in more student accommodation, in order to maximise their profit. They foresee immense riches if they succeed. They will make their profit by gaining permission for inappropriate development of a small plot of land that is meant to serve the local shopping and service needs of local people for the next 50+ years.

There are two fundamental traps here.

  • First, there’s an aphorism that the perfect is the enemy of the good. In other words, while we await the perfect solution, a good one sails on by.
  • Second, we’re led to think we are faced with Hobson’s choice. That is, it’s either this Mace plan, or nothing at all. This belief has caused several people to give up.

I’ve personally struggled with both of these. I want to come down on the side of what is most likely to be best for Botley; not wait for the unrealistically perfect solution, but also not acquiesce to something we are trapped into accepting. The growing local fear is that Vale will continue their managed decline of the tired old shopping centre until local people and planning committee will decide that anything is better than this.

I’ve come to the conclusion that this solution isn’t good for the future of Botley. We thought at the time of the last application that it was a matter of Doric’s plan, or nothing. But it wasn’t true at all. Cabinet decided to have another go with the same buyer, and we’ve had to go through it all again. I think that if this proposal, which is hard to argue is good for Botley, is turned down, something truly good has a chance to arise.

The fundamental problems introduced at the very beginning of this sales and planning deal have led us to this current situation. The applicant’s intended uses contravene the council’s declared purpose of this shopping centre and the policies that have been put into effect over the years to protect it.

  1. Vale’s original idea (from about 2009) was to sell the easternmost send of the site (‘Site 1’) for redevelopment, and use some of the proceeds from the sale to improve West Way Shopping Centre.
  2. When the new Cabinet took over in 2011, Site 1 was still for sale. West Way Shopping Centre was not.
  3. A buyer came along offering a LOT of money (the Vale’s consultants called it ‘a good price’) but they wanted to buy West Way Shopping Centre as well. They planned to build several hundred student dorm rooms, as well as the night-time entertainment facilities those students would want. Cabinet thought this sounded very profitable, so agreed to the broader sale.
  4. The sale of West Way Shopping Centre should have gone to the open market, rather than being arranged as a back room deal between Vale and Doric.
  5. Vale Cabinet should have considered their current polices and their long-term intentions to improve this area as a Local Service Centre.
  6. Vale Cabinet should have consulted with local people and members about these proposed changes.
  7. Instead, Vale Cabinet did a deal with Doric that will fundamentally change the character of this area. It’s a land sale deal that had a requirement that Doric get planning permission within a specified time period. That would be difficult to accomplish because the plans contravened lots of planning policies. But Vale helped in that, by creating policy in the emerging Local Plan 2031 that supported Doric’s plans. Vale also helped by agreeing to use compulsory purchase orders to acquire anyone’s property that stood in the way of Doric’s development. Vale didn’t consult local people or members about this.
  8. Two years later, Vale Planning Committee saw that Doric’s plans contravened our policies, and refused the application.
  9. By the terms within the land sales contracts, that should’ve been it: if no planning permission was received by end of Dec 2014, the sale deal was over. Local people thought it was ‘back to the drawing board’ and we would be able to work with a new buyer to get the right development for Botley.
  10. But Vale tried to help Doric further, so that both their profits could be realised. Cabinet changed the terms of the sales contract to give Doric another couple of years to get their planning permission. Cabinet also lowered the expectation of development by allowing a smaller food store, more hotel rooms, and other changes to make it easier to meet the contract criteria. Over the next year, Cabinet helped the applicant further by adopting a controversial Botley SPD. All so they could finally collect that ‘good price’ for selling the land.
  11. All along, members of Vale Cabinet who decided about land sales contracts included cabinet members responsible for planning. This conflict of interest has been pointed out many times in scores of consultation responses over the years.
  12. In January 2016, Cabinet adopted the Botley SPD, which still contravenes extant planning policy.
  13. The proposals in this planning application are neither compliant with our saved policies, nor the Botley SPD, nor with our Design Guide. It’s even non-compliant with NPPF. There are well-argued consultation responses on the website that document all the policy contraventions. Please, planning officers and planning committee members, read them.

So here we are, in a real mess. These sales contracts date back to late in 2012; the people who work and live in my community have been enduring this for nearly four years. Many residents have collapsed under the load of worry and now say, ‘Just get on with it.’ If that was the Vale’s strategy for the win, it’s simply unacceptable. If it’s just been an error-strewn exercise, we deserve an apology and a do-over.

This planning application for Botley centre contravenes planning policy and also Council’s explicit intentions for long term improvements to the Botley local service centre. At the same time, years of neglect by Council has brought about living accommodations not fit for purpose, empty disused office buildings, vacant shops and a run-down centre.

Vale needs to do a better job of seeing that the redevelopment of Botley centre meets local needs.

I object to the current planning applications for all the reasons stated so well in the public responses to the consultation.