Tell the council what you think!

There are an increasing number of consultations online lately from the City Council and the County Council.

It’s easy to miss out on these. The City Council is asking for your feedback on:

  1. Parks and open spaces
  2. Its sustainability strategy
  3. New governance arrangements

The County Council wants you to comment on:

  1. Design approaches to Frideswide Square
  2. The Oxfordshire Big Debate (basically where to make cuts!)
  3. How important is Oxfordshire’s countryside to you?

Please do send in your comments – it is becoming increasingly common for councils to say that they have consulted residents but residents tell us they don’t know these consultations are happening. That is because they are very often online, and this bothers me because I know very well that some of our residents feel ‘disenfranchised’ by not having (or not choosing to have) access to the Web.

I shall set up sticky links to the the consultation websites so that you can click on them to make sure you haven’t missed out on anything!

Proposed traffic scheme latest

Successful lobbying by Highfield Residents Association for measures to make Highfield streets less congested with through traffic and to reduce the speed of vehicles using its streets has heightened the awareness of county planners of the problems experienced by residents in their area

The county planners have now produced proposals for a  traffic management scheme for Highfield that is currently out for consultation. We asked the county officer responsible for these proposals to convene a meeting with residents’ groups, and she kindly agreed.

The meeting took place on 10 June. Here are some of the notes I took away with me from it. The closing date for comments and objections to the scheme is 1 July

Notes from the meeting about the traffic scheme held on Thursday 10 June

 

Present:

Cllr Altaf-Khan (County Councillor and Chair of the meeting)

Joy White (County planning officer)

2 representatives from Highfield Residents’ Association Traffic Group

3 representatives from New Headington Residents’ Association Traffic Group

2 representatives from Friends of Old Headington Traffic Group

1 representative from Friends of Old Headington (the Chair)

1 representative from Central and North Headington Residents’ Association

Cllr Ruth Wilkinson (Headington ward)

 

What we agreed about:

·         There should be a master plan for traffic management across the whole of Headington

·         The strategic health authority and the hospitals trust should be required to manage transport issues more effectively, particularly in respect of hospital staff

·         Everyone wants safer, less congested traffic routes in their area

·         Traffic calming in residential streets is a good idea

 

Things people were worried about included:

·         Traffic is like water: if you stop it in one area, it will spread into another and this will result in more rat runs. Some feel this scheme is piecemeal

·         No right turns would mean longer journeys and restricted access to homes and businesses for some affected residents – more fuel, more time and less freedom

·         Possible loss of parking spaces

·         Confusion for visitors and delivery drivers (won’t show up on sat navs)

·         The disadvantages of the scheme outweigh the benefits for some residents

·         The bollards in All Saints Road

·         We need some traffic flow modelling to be done so we have more evidence to go on

·         The timing: some people felt we should wait until after the London Road redevelopment as this may affect the way traffic flows through Headington

·         The London Road junctions with Windmill Road and Headley Way will come under much more pressure, and some people are worried about safety at the Windmill Road junction already. Can the existing infrastructure accommodate the dispersed traffic?

 

We thought about new ideas which would not restrict access so much including:

·         The replacement of some pinch points with a pedestrian crossing in Lime Walk

·         The possibility of making Bickerton Rd and Stapleton Rd one way

·         Ways to make  Lime Walk look more like a residential road than a main road to calm speeds, for example planting (non-sticky) lime trees on alternate sides of the road

·         Putting bollards in New High Street at the junction with All Saints Road

 

Actions

·         Residents’ associations will hold open meetings to discuss their response to these plans

Ø  New Headington: Fri 25 June All Saints Church Hall at 6.15

Ø  Highfield: Mon 21 June (tbc)

·         Ruth and Altaf will continue to hold street surgeries in New Headington, McMaster House and in Windmill Road: next surgery Wed 16 June at 6.00-8.00 pm, 24 Wilberforce St.

·         It’s important that people have more time to make a considered response after they have attended open meetings. Many people are still angry and upset. Joy has now made 1 July the closing date for responses

 

PLEASE RESPOND TO THIS VERY IMPORTANT CONSULTATION

– the feedback form is on the link above.

 

Please contact David and Ruth if you have particular concerns

Headington Festival Sunday 6 June!

Don’t forget to come along to Sunday’s Headington Festival! There will be lots to see and do for all the family from 1.30-5.00 pm. Let’s hope the weather stays fine!

Ruth will be helping to staff the Friends of Bury Knowle Park stall. If you want to talk to me informally about any local issue, do feel free to come and discuss it with me! I shall have fliers for the next street surgery too – it’s on Tuesday from 6 pm -8pm at All Saints Road

Got an issue you want to raise?

Our next councillors’ street surgery will be held on Tuesday 8 June from 6 pm – 8 pm on the corner of All Saints Road. There’s no need to book!

We are working hard to help you with local issues and want to hear what concerns you – currently our top two email topics are the new traffic management proposals in Highfield, and the level of traffic accidents and near misses both locally and in the London Road corridor

***The traffic management scheme has been proposed by County officers, and this is your chance to talk to your local County Councillor Altaf-Khan.***

If you can’t make it, but have something on your mind, please drop us a line.

County proposals on Highfield traffic management

The proposals for traffic management in the area bounded by Old Road, Windmill Rd., London Rd. and Gipsy Lane can be viewed here

Please do fill in a feedback form online or tel 01865 815882 for a paper copy.
David and I have already received a number of phone calls and emails about this. Please do continue to copy us into your views and suggestions for alternative improvements.

We shall be holding street surgeries in this area shortly- please watch this space for details. You may also wish to contact Altaf Khan, your County Councillor, on 01865 798777 or mob 07931 345554, and Clly Rodney Rose at the County Council who has responsibility for transport within the City

Are we getting what we voted for?

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Headington residents have asked David and me how far the coalition agreement satisfies the Lib Dem manifesto pledges for which they voted.

Here are links to the two most important documents, the coalition agreement and the manifesto, so that you can see for yourself how far Lib Dem objectives have been achieved through negotiation

I am attending a special conference on Sunday afternoon at the NEC in Birmingham as a voting rep for our constituency and it will be interesting to join in the debate. I confess that I had initial worries about the likely content of any coalition agreement with the Conservative Party as I felt that there was insufficient common ground between the policies and manifesto pledges of the Tories and the Lib Dems to make a coalition work:  now that I have read the negotiations agreements, I feel reassured that the coalition will enable the Lib Dems to make  substantial progress in achieving much of what we set out to do at the start of our election campaign, although there are clearly some issues on which we disagree profoundly! I think the Lib Dem negotiating team has done a good job. See what you think! We welcome your views.

Taking Lib Dem policies into Government

The policy agreement for the new Government is full of Liberal Democrat policies. It is a real chance to put into action the ideas that we have campaigned for.

A Fair Start for Children

  • Introduce a Pupil Premium to give all children a fair start.

Fairer taxes and Economic Reform

  • A substantial increase in the personal allowance from April 2011 with a longer term policy objective of further increasing the personal allowance to £10,000, making further real terms steps each year towards this objective
  • Reform of the banking system, ensuring a flow of lending to businesses and a Banking Levy. An independent commission on separating retail and investment banking.
  • Capital Gains Tax reform

Fair Politics

  • Fixed-term parliaments and a referendum on electoral reform for the House of Commons.
  • A power of recall, allowing voters to force a by-election where an MP was found to have engaged in serious wrongdoing.
  • A wholly or mainly elected House of Lords on the basis of proportional representation.
  • Giving Parliament control of its own agenda so that all bills are properly debated.
  • Enacting the Calman Commission proposals and a referendum on further Welsh devolution.
  • A statutory register of lobbyists.
  • A limit on political donations and reform of party funding in order to remove big money from politics.
  • Radical devolution of power and greater financial autonomy to local government and community groups.

A fair and sustainable future

  • Establish a smart electricity grid and the roll-out of smart meters.
  • Establish feed-in tariff systems in electricity
  • A huge increase in energy from waste through anaerobic digestion.
  • The creation of a green investment bank.
  • The provision of home energy improvement paid for by the savings from lower energy bills.
  • Retention of energy performance certificates when HIPs are scrapped.
  • Measures to encourage marine energy.
  • The establishment of an emissions performance standard that will prevent coal-fired power stations being built unless they are equipped with sufficient CCS to meet the emissions performance standard.
  • Establish a high-speed rail network.
  • Cancel the third runway at Heathrow and refuse additional runways at Gatwick and Stansted.
  • Replace the Air Passenger Duty with a ‘per plane’ duty.
  • The provision of a floor price for carbon, as well as efforts to persuade the EU to move towards full auctioning of ETS permits.
  • Make the import or possession of illegal timber a criminal offence.
  • Promote green spaces and wildlife corridors in order to halt the loss of habitats and restore biodiversity.
  • Reduce central government carbon emissions by 10 per cent within 12 months.
  • Increase the target for energy from renewable sources.

Pensions

  • Restoration of the earnings link for the basic state pension from April 2011 with a “triple guarantee” that pensions are raised by the higher of earnings, prices or 2.5%.
  • Phase out the default retirement age and end the rules requiring compulsory annuitisation at 75.
  • Implement the Parliamentary and Health Ombudsman’s recommendation to make fair and transparent payments to Equitable Life policyholders.

Civil Liberties

  • Scrap the ID card scheme, the National Identity register, the next generation of biometric passports and the ContactPoint Database.
  • Outlaw the finger-printing of children at school without parental permission.
  • Extend the scope of the Freedom of Information Act to provide greater transparency.
  • Adopt the Scottish approach to stopping retention of innocent people’s DNA on the DNA database.
  • Defend trial by jury.
  • Restore rights to non-violent protest.
  • A review of libel laws to protect freedom of speech.
  • Safeguards against the misuse of anti-terrorism legislation.
  • Further regulation of CCTV.
  • Ending of storage of internet and email records without good reason.
  • A new mechanism to prevent the proliferation of unnecessary new criminal offences.
  • End the detention of children for immigration purposes.

For the full text of the Conservative – Liberal Democrat coalition negotiations agreements, click here