Planning Aid is an organization which provides free, independent and professional town planning advice and support to communities and individuals who cannot afford to pay planning consultant fees. It complements the work of local planning authorities, but is wholly independent of them.

Planning Aid can help people to:

· Understand and use the planning system

· Participate in preparing plans

· Prepare their own plans for the future of their community

· Comment on planning applications

· Apply for planning permission or appeal against refusal of permission

· Represent themselves at public inquiries.

I shall put a sticky link on the left hand menu to this web page as it may be a useful contact point for residents’ associations and those making (or commenting on or objecting to) planning applications

Two planning applications have been lodged for properties in Sandfield Road and Woodlands Road this week 18-24 November.  If you want to see them in full, please click on planning applications in the left hand tool bar.

Those who attended the planning meeting of the North East Area Committee last Thursday will remember that the planning application relating to 10/12 Stephen Road was discussed.  The decision of the area committee has now been called in by the Strategic Development Control Committee for further consideration.  There are two ways that decisions by area committees can be called in - either by the most senior officer in charge of planning at the Council (Michael Crofton-Briggs) or by four councillors.  This decision has been called in by the portfolio holder for planning, Cllr Colin Cook, and three other councillors. 

The membership of that committee is: Councillors Abbasi, Altaf Khan, Benjamin (Vice-Chair), Brundin, Christian (Chair), Cook, Goddard, Gotch, Khan, Keen, Timbs and Young. The Committee has a meeting scheduled for today but it is too late to include this item within the agenda.  The next date scheduled for the committee to meet is the 18 December and I have asked one of the officers to double check that date for us as it’s so near Christmas. A number of meeting dates have been changed at short notice recently so I will post this up when it has been confirmed.

One delegated planning decisions have been made by officers this week at the NOC.

Please click on Planning decisions on left hand menu bar for more details

There will be a Consultation Event on the re-development of Windmill House, 157a Windmill Road, Oxford at 6.30 pm on Tuesday 28^th October at the Seminar Room, Nuffield Orthopaedic Hospital, Windmill Road

Stonham is Home Group’s care and support business which operates the support service at the above property. Jointly, they are working with Oxford City Council to re-develop the above site. The proposal is to demolish the existing building and construct a new one to provide supported accommodation for young people and supported living units for individuals with learning difficulties.

Representatives from Home Group Development Team, Stonham and Oxford City Council will be in attendance to answer questions and listen to the views of invited local residents to ensure the development has minimal impact on the area. David and I will be there too.

Please click here to see the County Council’s plans to pedestrianise the centre of Oxford

I went to a briefing on this tonight. I get the impression that very few people have been consulted. This is

a vision, not a solid immutable blueprint (Keith Mitchell).

Their view of the City Centre is that there are too many buses, dirty
cluttered streets, and poor quality pavement materials

The exemplar of good practice they want to aspire to is the Castle redevelopment

They are aiming for:

• more pedestrianisation
• low-emission buses (trams are too expensive)
• optical registration of bus routes
• significantly reduced no. buses but the same no. passenger journeys
• smartcard bus ticketing
• cleaner streets
• better pavement materials

The buses from East Oxford via Cowley Road/Iffley Road/St
Clements/Marston Road will turn round at the Plain - that’s the
current thinking. But they will think about extending the route for
through buses from further out if this is not possible. From St
Clements? From Gipsy Lane? From London Road roundabout? From Park
and Ride? That’s all up for debate and the bus companies will have a
big role in sorting this out. But at present they are assuming the
buses from our end of Oxford will turn round at the Plain and will not
diminish in frequency. People will then change onto buses that run through the City Centre

Buses from North Oxford will turn round at a strange new turning place by
the Ashmolean short of the Martyrs’ Memorial, councillors are concerned
this will upset St John’s College

Mr Hugh-Jones (Env/Econ) mentioned talks starting about running a bus service
between Thornhill, the hospitals, and Peartree.

A bendy bus had been superimposed on the presentation slides, it resembled an airport bus for people to stand in, with very few seats. “What about the elderly? What about
people with luggage?” we exclaimed! But the type of bus has not been decided upon yet

Ian Hudspeth and Keith Mitchell seem to think the scheme frees up the options for London buses to depart from other areas of the City. I pointed out that 25%
Tube passengers get on the coach between the Plain and London Road
roundabout, that many Headington residents have bought houses here in
order to access the London buses, and that proprietors of bed and
breakfast accommodation and hotels in Headington had acquired premises
precisely because they were on the main route to London.
I pointed out that the bus companies would be hard to persuade that
their established routes should be changed as they stood to lose a lot
of money, at least initially.

They want to pedestrianise Broad Street and pave it with high quality
materials funded from developer money! (from where? Where can they
develop Broad St.?)

They have no budget for this at present. They are interested in
getting money from the Transport Innovations Fund and they think
they’d be successful, although this would not be enough

Bus stops would move from Queen St to Castle St. and New Road

They will do an audit of cycle racks, then decide where to site new
ones. Lots of concern about the need for cycle routes - The Plain may
become a death trap for cyclists? They would like a rent-a bike scheme as in Barcelona

Phase 1 is putting a non-stopping bus lane down the middle of Queen St
with pedestrian walkways either side.

The plans for consultation are not yet firmed up, but residents will be able to give their views via the County Council. There’s a lot to sort out before plans get as far as that!

We know there is a lot of concern from residents about cycling in Headington.  Pedestrians tell us that they experience near misses or are bumped into by cyclists on pavements. Cyclists say they experience near misses or are forced off road by buses. Car drivers tell us that cyclists swerve in front of them without using arm signals. 

The neighbourhood police have been stopping cyclists who ride on the pavements and ask them why they are doing it, and the answer is frequently “because I don’t feel safe cycling on the road”.  Many of these cyclists are adults, not children.  We need to come up with some good ideas about how to improve all this, before there are any more accidents.  At a recent Neighbourhood Action Group meeting some suggestions included:

• impose on the spot fines for people who cycle on pavements

• stop those cycling on pavements and give them a warning first time round, if they are stopped again, send them on a compulsory cycling proficiency training course

• enforce the law that cycle lanes should be used only by cyclists and not by cars - this would make cyclists feel safer

• devise cycle routes that take cyclists off the main roads and give a map of these routes and a warning to those who cycle on pavements

• put up signs instructing cyclists to dismount where traffic junctions are particularly dangerous

We have asked for this topic to be raised at a forthcoming North East Area Committee meeting.  There are two questions that must be asked of the County:

1. Why isn’t there a Cycling Officer for Oxfordshire?

2. Why isn’t there an up to date County strategy on cycling?

If you have any ideas or suggestions, we would welcome them!

Some of you will remember that there is a long history of planning applications for the area around and including 10 and 12 Stephen Road. It seems only a few weeks’ ago that a planning inspector dismissed appeals on two previous applications at this site. Now there is a new application for the same address. It is similar to the previous applications but the developers hope that they have found a way to overcome the concerns of the planning inspector. As there is history on this site, it is only right that this application is heard at a future Area Committee — if, that is, Labour have not abolished the right to have such cases heard locally by then — and I will be interested to hear both sides of the argument at that stage. That’s the point when I’ll make up my own mind. But if you want to form your own view now, do go to the Council’s planning portal and look under the reference number, which is:  08?01961/FUL.

Following our street surgery in St Anne’s Road, we have reported residents’ concerns about near misses due from the traffic light sequencing to the County’s Safety Officer. Here is his reply:

As you will be aware, the changes to the traffic light phasing here were introduced in late 2007 to help improve traffic flows. We have been monitoring safety here very closely, and although there have been two reported accidents (one resulting in serious injury to an elderly pedestrian, and one resulting in slight injury to a pedal cyclist) neither appear to have been in any way related to the changes. It is nevertheless worrying to hear about the recent incidents; we are now working on the next phase of the London Road project covering the length between Osler Road and Wharton Road, and one objective will be to make the shopping area as friendly a place as possible for pedestrians, and an important part of this will be trying to achieve consistently low speeds on the approach to , and through the junction. We hope to consult on the proposals in the spring 2009, which will be an opportunity for all users to express their views and help shape the scheme.

Planning, particularly strategic planning, can be mind-numbing at times. I’m not sure the little attempt to make the City Council’s Core Strategy interesting will entice many to read it, but it is an important document, defining aims for Oxford in terms of house-building and the facilities to support them.

It is not yet adopted as policy, but it’s nearly there. It’s been through several stages of drafting and consulting and is now out to final consultation for a 6-week consultation period, running from Friday 5th September - Friday 17th October.  This is the final stage of consultation before it is submitted to the Secretary of State towards the end of November.  An examination is likely to take place in March 2009.

In case you’re still reading: at this stage, it starts to have weight in relation to decisions on particular planning applications, but it is limited until it’s actually been formally submitted it to the Secretary of State.

This document does matter, so do go onto the City Council’s website by clicking on the link above and look at it.