The Area Committee meeting will be at Corpus Christi Hall at 6 pm on Tuesday 20 October. Among the issues we will be discussing are:
Fun for everyone! All welcome
What could a sustainable future look like? If you are interested in attending an inspiring and visionary community event towards creating a sustainable future, then visit this website and find out about the exciting activities on offer from 09.00-19.00 Saturday 17 October in West Oxford
In readiness for Halloween the Neighbourhood Watch Office has obtained a stock of “No trick or treat” notices which may be displayed at your home if you so wish.
If you would like a small supply of these notices for your neighbourhood they may be collected from the front counters of St. Aldates or Cowley Police stations.
As some of you may already have spotted in the news, Planning Alerts has
been effected by legal action by the Royal Mail: see this link.
Tom Watson MP has tabled an Early Day Motion in Parliament calling on
the Royal Mail to allow non-profit organisations to use the postcode
database for free. If you feel strongly about this, please write to your MP asking him to sign this Early Day Motion (number EDM 2000) and protest at the actions of The
Royal Mail.
You can write to your MP here
–You can also sign the petition —
Nearly 1,200 people have so far signed a petition on the Prime
Minister’s website, if you wish to add your name, please click here
I have!
Landlord Accreditation is a set of standards, or a code of conduct, relating to the management and physical condition of privately rented accommodation. Landlords who join the scheme and abide by the standards are ‘accredited’.
The overall aim of the accreditation scheme is to improve the condition and management of privately rented homes and reduce the need for intervention for the Council. It will also enable tenants to recognise private landlords and agents who are committed to providing good quality accommodation.
A possible problem is that the scheme is entirely voluntary so there is every possibility that bad landlords won’t sign up to it
The City Council would like your comments on the proposals, to complete a questionnaire please click on the website for the scheme.
There is a limited pot of money allocated to the North East Area Committee to spend on Area Committee grants to local projects. The total amount of money allocated to areas outside those eligible for social inclusion money e.g. Headington, Marston is £8553 for this financial year.
The closing date for this round of applications is 16 October
If your group wishes to apply for a small community grant, the relevant application form should be completed and submitted by the end of the month.
For all information on grants, please visit the council’s web page here.
The County has proposed to make some alterations in Margaret Road: they are asking for comments on proposed changes to the junction of Margaret Road and Wharton Road, and also on a build-out in Margaret Road.
County Cllr Roz Smith and City Cllr Ruth Wilkinson are making a site visit at 6 pm tomorrow Friday 2 October to discuss these proposals with local residents. If you would like to come along and give us your views, you will be very welcome.
If you cannot come to the meeting but would like a copy of the proposals, please email Ruth for details
As several residents have asked us about declaration of interest with regard to the decision-making on the Brookes application at last week’s full council meeting, I felt I should publish this reply.
I gave my apologies for the full meeting of Council for the following reason. Councillors are bound by a code of conduct which is available for you to see on the council’s website. Where the subject for debate is a planning application, any councillor who has an interest must declare it. If the interest may be deemed to be prejudicial to any decision that councillor may take in the eyes of the general public, then the advice to councillors is that they should formally declare a prejudicial interest and withdraw from the debate, and that they are ineligible to vote on the application.
This item had already come up at Area Committee for comment. I sought legal advice about whether I should declare a personal or a prejudicial interest, and was advised that members of the public might be led to believe that I would not have an open mind on the merits of the application because I am employed by Oxford Brookes University (as Site Services Librarian at the Wheatley Campus). I declared a prejudicial interest and withdrew from the meeting at the point that the planning application was discussed.
The special council meeting called at short notice had only one item on the agenda – the Brookes application. If I had made the decision to attend, I would have walked into the Chamber, declared a prejudicial interest, and been obliged to withdraw again. I made the decision that this would not be in the best interests of the ward I represent, and chose to spend the time instead making ward visits and completing casework. I duly sent in my apologies on the grounds that I would have to declare prejudicial interest in any case, but this was not reported in the Press.
So if you are wondering why Cllr Wilkinson’s name was missing from the list of those present, this is why!
Many of you have let us know that you are unhappy with the appearance of the area in front of the Nat West Bank in the London Road, which has been fenced off with orange and white boards for quite some time. Having talked to the Manager, it would appear that there is an ownership issue between the bank and its landlord; which of the two owns the land that is affected? We have discussed this with the manager of the Nat West Bank and he has kindly agreed to contact his Legal Dept. and let us know the latest. Watch this space for further information!
Have you ever seen a five year old child who’s never seen a book before?
I have. When I helped at the primary school in my local area, I gave a lad a book and he looked at it suspiciously. Then he shook it, to see if it made a noise. When it didn’t, he kicked it, to see if it made a good football. It didn’t. So he left it on the floor and walked away.
Together with a group of volunteers, I am helping to start a library in a community centre on an inner city estate. It’s a very different sort of library because the people we hope to attract are those who don’t ‘do’ reading, or are scared of filling in forms to join, or of working out complicated numbering systems to find a book or magazines they would like to look at. Our aim is to get books into people’s houses and promote a reading culture in an area of cripplingly poor educational attainment and social deprivation. It’s about adding value to the quality of people’s lives.
The local volunteer helpers at this library like to talk about ‘stuff’, not books. They want their place to be called “Read/Swap”, not The Library. (“Library” is a scary word). They want material to have interesting pictures on the covers. Categories of stuff are called “Things to do outside” (sport, woodwork etc.), “Things to do inside” (cake decorating, sewing etc.), “Stories about people” (Biography), “Stories for grown ups” (Yes! That includes literature as well as novels) etc.
I would like to thank the New Headington Residents’ Association for donating unsold books from their Headington Festival stall to Read/Swap, and for the donations from individual residents who have got to hear about the project. A story on the Read/Swap library is featured in the Oxford Mail on 2 September. If you have any good quality “children’s stuff” or picturebooks that you would care to donate, I should be very grateful to receive them, or they can be left at Rose Hill Community Centre, The Oval, Rose Hill, OX4 4UY between 10.00 and 12.00 weekday mornings.
Thanks! Ruth (Chartered Librarian in my working life. Or should I say “Stuffperson”?!)