Just got the agenda through for the next Oxford city council south-east area committee.

Area committees are monthly meetings of the councillors for each area (in our case, Rose Hill and Iffley, Littlemore, Blackbird Leys and Northfield Brook) which hear updates from council officers, the police and health service; decide on other matters such as the allocation of small grants to local organisations; and decide on planning applications. More information and the dates of future meetings are here.

This last point is controversial: one of the few votes lost by the minority Labour administration who ran the council 2004-6 was about the removal of planning from area committees, as it puts councillors in the invidious position of not being able to represent the views of their constituents, but instead having to be neutral in order to make “quasi-judicial” decisions. Although there have been few such controversial decisions since I’ve been on the council, I can see it must be infuriating to have to stop being a representative of an area, and make decisions for that area taking only planning considerations into account, rather than the wider needs and opinions of residents. In particular, making these decisions in local community centres in front of one’s electorate means there may be a powerful incentive to make politically-wise decisions. In these days of targets for planning decisions upheld at appeal and financial penalties for poor performance, it seems a silly system to me.

Planning - “can this building have an illuminated fascia?” “can this house have a porch?” - also takes up vast amounts of time. The system works quite well for major applications, which are still decided centrally by a committee of councillors called the strategic development control committee - councillors from the south-east area get to comment on those in our areas, but don’t make the decision. But where it comes to the more minor decisions, it just doesn’t seem like the best use of eight councillors’ time. I’d rather have a real chance to hold local services to account on behalf of residents of Rose Hill and Iffley, and give local people the opportunity to stand up and have their say. I’d happily attend a city-wide planning meeting at another time, either as an advocate for local residents if there’s something controversial, or to be part of a panel deciding on applications for other areas. Members of the licensing committee (like me) aren’t allowed to decide on licence applications for pubs in the ward we represent; why is planning different? By all means let’s devolve decisionmaking as much as we can, but it’s not meaningful devolution when you end up with four-hour long meetings discussing alterations to buildings, by the end of which there are just the councillors and clerks in the room, even the Oxford Mail journo having given up.

Having said all that, as a conscientious and diligent (well, I’m trying!) councillor, I dutifully take part in the planning section, trying to make the best decisions I can.

Thankfully there’s not a lot of planning on next month’s area committee meeting, to be held at 6pm on 4 September at Blackbird Leys Leisure Centre. Items on the agenda include:
- commenting on the demolition of Remy Place and its replacement with a new block of sheltered housing
- a reportback on the introduction of neighbourhood policing on the Leys and Rose Hill
- the review of community centres in the city
- installing floodlights on Rose Hill Rec and CCTV at the Oval shops

As always, get in touch with any comments or questions. Hopefully the agenda will appear here for download sometime soon.