GENERAL VIEWS

EMAIL

CHERWELL DISTRICT NEWS ARCHIVE

This is a record of Cherwell District council matters at the beginning of the new millennium.

JULY 2000
We are now well into the New Blue government of Bodicote House under the Conservative-controlled District Council. The mug shots have been sent to you all in the local CDC mag. I hope you did not think it a collage of the English football hooligans in Belgium. I thought my own photograph a little tired-looking, I would have preferred more of the dashing dot.com entrepreneur touch but have to be satisfied with what the CDC photographer can do in the lobby of Bodicote House.

As we look forward to next year's County Council elections we come across one of the sillier things in our administration of public life. The County Council ward embracing Heyford, Somerton and Souldern loses Fritwell to the next County Council ward.

One of the first meetings of the new council has been a meeting to discuss the review of the District Council wards as the towns now greatly outweigh rural wards. Some rural district wards have less than a thousand voters and some town wards have over six thousand electors. The result will be a re-drawing of the ward boundaries. This way we are likely to be given Ardley and Fewcott to our ward. The end result will be - yes it will - another election in 2002 of all district wards.

By the way - don't forget Mr Blair wants an election soon!

D Makepeace, District Councillor

| TOP |

SEPTEMBER 2000
Like most organisations there was a summer lull in the committee work of Cherwell District Council - apart from the planning committees. The district is served by two planning sub-committees, the North Sub.comm and the South Sub.comm. There is an enormous amount of work that is covered by both sub-committees. They meet every month and the meetings normally take four hours. The agenda for each is around 100 pages long. In addition there are often sites visits to be made. Many applications do not need great amounts of debate but there is controversy where disagreements occur and on these matters the debate can be quite heated. The public can attend these meetings but may not speak.

The matters causing most controversy are those dealing with applications for the conversion of agricultural buildings to other uses and the applications for building new houses on vacant land in villages. Much of this is driven by the poor state of farming and the high value of property.

The property distortion can also be seen in applications for the change of use of public houses in villages to households. Without exception the pub today is worth more as a house than it is as a pub. The only way to protect them is to use them more often so that the revenue overrides the capital value. You are as welcome in your local pub to drink fruit juice as you are if you are a beer drinker. The same goes for your local shop – if you still have one near you.

I sit on the South Area Planning Sub-committee and if one has problems with planning please do not hesitate to contact me. Phone daytime 243 333.

R.J. Makepeace

| TOP |

NOVEMBER 2000
By the time you read this you will have received the letter from the North Oxford Consortium informing us of their planning application for the 1000 houses that has been proposed in the Dictrict Council local review. There may be some bartering on the details but it is almost certain to be accepted. This should then be the norm until the next local government review in 2011.

The new houses will have be built where the existing buildings are now, at the centre of the base. This creates an interesting dilemma. At present the consortium is generating significant income from hiring out the base buildings for industrial uses. It is impressive how completely the facilities have become taken up. One wonders how interested the consortium are in building the proposed houses. If one can make a good income without building anything, as at present, why build houses which when sold produce no more income. Either way the consortium will not lose out.

Set against the problems posed by the base the problems that Bicester and Banbury have are enormous. They are trying to accommodate far greater house building numbers than those proposed on the base. Already there is a mood to divert more houses onto the base than the 1000 proposed at present.

Under government direction Oxfordshire has to build 46,000 new houses by 2011. This is in addition to the present building being done. We must keep a wary eye on developments, otherwise come 2011 the base may become a target for another huge building project.

Dick Makepeace

| TOP |

JANUARY 2001
Who Governs Oxfordshire?
You must all have received the CDC questionnaire on how you want the future of Cherwell District to be run. This is driven by central government determined to "modernise" local government.

Why they want this, is difficult to work out. Did you notice that they have not allowed you the option of leaving it as it is. There is no guarantee that any new system will improve on the current one. It might look antiquated but it is open, democratic and uncorrupted.

Local councils used to be responsible for the money they raised and spent and the services they provided. This is no longer the case. The Conservative government of the 80s and 90s took more and more control of the money and the Labour government has continued this policy.

It has been particularly unfortunate for Oxfordshire. Until 1985 the County Council was controlled by Conservatives and they ran a mean council with low levels of service and spending. They lost control in 1985 but ever since then governments have been fiercely resisting any rises in council spending. We are the second lowest spending county council in the country, with a council tax rate which is below average. Yet leading members of the Council were summoned to London earlier this year to justify our council tax to the government minister. It is a tribute to the good management of the council and the high standards of the staff that our services are as good as they are.

To make things worse, the Labour government has taken more and more control over the services we provide. Our choices are being severely limited and scope for initiative is being driven out of local government. The Education Department, for instance, was told to name eight priorities for its work. It was also told precisely what one to six must be. So it added on its own seven and eight only to be told that one of those was unacceptable.

Senior council officers spend a totally absurd amount of their time writing reports and submitting plans to central government when they ought to be managing the services they provide for local people. I think this is totally wrong. Local councillors should be answerable to the people who elect them, both for the level of revenue they raise and for the quality of the services they provide.

The dead hand of Whitehall should be lifted from the town and shire halls. Even trying to stand for election is fraught with bureaucracy The government tries to control us through a complicated system of grants and bids. We can only tell you what we would like to do and promise to play the government's line. This applies even to something as trivial as printing a circular.

R.J. Makepeace

| TOP |