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Tuesday 30th
January 2007
Rats in
Oxford - Letter to the
Editor
from Cllr John Howell
Sir,
The Times has
discovered rats prospering in Oxford (The Times Sat 3 Jan). This is a
direct consequence of the ill thought out policy of reducing rubbish
collection to once a fortnight. The Greens and the Liberal- Democrats,
who control Oxford City Council, are pretending that this was a green
policy designed to reduce the amount of rubbish collected. How is the
amount reduced by collecting it less often (perhaps they hope the rats
will eat some of it)? This is no more than a cost cutting exercise
needed to prop up the City’s tottering finances.
Having
endangered the City’s health by infesting it with rats, the same
Councillors are now trying to take over the City’s social services,
libraries, roads, public transport services, schools and education from
the County Council by their bid for unitary status. This would be an
unmitigated disaster.
By using the
excuse “that there have always been rats in Oxford”, the Liberal-
Democrat spokesman revealed the hopeless and shallowness of their
actions and why the Government rates them as “weak”. Take on more
responsibility? The City Council needs its authority reduced, or
better, helped along by cooperating with the excellent Oxfordshire
County Council.
Councillor Don
Seale
(Bampton
Division)
Oxfordshire County
Council
Tuesday 30th
January 2007
Letter to the
Editor
from Cllr John Howell
Sir,
Small
district councils like Oxford City are asked to provide relatively few
services for their residents. But one thing the City is asked to
provide is a domestic refuse collection which meets residents’ needs.
The success of Oxford City Council in turning the city of dreaming
spires into a rat-infested hole is, therefore, much more significant an
indication of institutional failure than even your article acknowledges
(27 January).
Perhaps
we should not be surprised; Oxford City Council is, after all, one of
the worst performing councils in England. Yet it is this same council
which, only last week, asked Ruth Kelly to grant it unitary status.
Residents and those who love Oxford will be heartened to know that what
that means is that the City Council wants to do for education, social
care, highways, libraries and those other services in Oxfordshire which
are currently provided by an excellent County Council, what it has so
dramatically done for rubbish - make a rat-infested mess of it.
The City
Council’s response ‘that there have always been rats in Oxford’ is
clearly the sort of arrogant reply we will hear when schools and social
care, our roads and our libraries start falling apart if the City
Council gets control of them. But a cry of “there have always been poor
schools/poor social care etc. in Oxford” simply will not do where
people's lives and futures are at stake. Only the rats will get the
last laugh.
Yours faithfully,
Cllr Dr John M Howell
County
Councillor
for Nuneham Courtenay
Dorchester & Berinsfield Division
Oxfordshire County Council
Monday 22nd
January 2007
Letter to the
Editor
from Cllr Jim Couchman
Sir,
I
have only had time to skim Oxford
City Council’s “document”
supporting its bid to become a unitary council
and I have done so primarily with regard to my own
County Council Cabinet portfolio of Adult
Social Services. One might be forgiven for wondering whether the author
is even faintly aware of the responsibilities which accrue to this
service. The suggestion is that there would be an innovative joining of
Adult Social Services and Housing; there is nothing very innovative
about such an aggregation of services – I was a member of Bexley Council
more than 25 years ago when it became the first authority in the country
to appoint a Director of Housing and Social Services and many have
followed where Bexley led.
What strikes me particularly about this document in relation to the
County’s delivery of Adult Social Services is the failure to make
mention of the complex Section 31 agreements with the Primary Care Trust
– co-terminous with the County boundaries - and the Oxfordshire Care
Partnership – co-terminous with the County boundaries - by which service
is delivered to Older People, the Mentally Ill and those with a Physical
or Learning Disability. These are long term arrangements which are not
easily disaggregated. Also, as with Education, there is a senior
management structure and there are specialist services within the
Directorate which would have to be triplicated if the County were split
into three unitaries.
The example of the small Berkshire unitaries is not encouraging in the
field of Social Services and I understand that Kent is still having to
support Medway in its delivery of Social Services, Medway being twice
the size of a putative Oxford City unitary and having split 10 years ago
from Kent. If you cannot form successfully your own Adult Social
Services and have to rely on a kind of “federation”, you would be better
staying in a two-tier arrangement working closer together.
After all Social Services unlike Education
is the largest service over which local government has a reasonably
autonomous control.
I
hope the foregoing may be helpful
Yours sincerely
Cllr Jim Couchman
Cabinet
Member for Social Care & Policy Coordination
Oxfordshire County Council
Friday 12th
January 2007
Letter to the
Editor, Oxford Mail
from Cllr John Howell
Sir
It
would be unfortunate if your readers thought that the County
Council has only now cleared highway drains blocked by last
year’s floods at Nuneham Courtenay (11 January). The County
Council’s response has been much more timely and helpful than
that.
At
the time of the floods, for example, our emergency planning team
was able very quickly to find temporary accommodation for those
forced from their homes whilst the County Council’s Fire Service
did sterling work throughout. Highway engineers were also on
site checking drains and culverts, and, supplying sand bags and
helping where they could.
Since then, our Highways Team has jetted the culvert under the A
4074 to the north of the village twice to ensure it remains
unblocked, has installed
new, wider piping from the
carriageway drains to the north of the village to increase water
flow through the system, has cleared highway gullies
twice prior to the
work to which your report refers, and, with me (as the local
county councillor), has been in regular contact with the
village, and other agencies involved. The current work has
revealed previously unknown drains which have also been cleared
improving the highway drainage system as a whole. All the
highway drains in the village will be jetted again shortly to
make sure they take the maximum flow possible.
South Oxfordshire District Council has been no less diligent and
has quickly commissioned engineers to look at the cause of the
flooding and to recommend long-term solutions. The work we’ve
been able to do in the interim will hopefully reduce the impact
of any future flooding in the immediate months ahead while
long-term measures are evaluated.
Yours faithfully,
Cllr Dr John M Howell
County
Councillor
for Nuneham Courtenay
Dorchester & Berinsfield Division
Oxfordshire County Council
Wednesday 10th
January 2007
Letter to the
Editor, Oxford Mail
from Carolyn Ten Holter
Sir
Despite your article (10 January) reporting the support of the interim
Chief Executive of Oxford City Council for a unitary bid, you might want
to record just why the County Council yesterday threw down with great
force the gauntlet to oppose the City Council’s bid for what’s known as
‘unitary status’. Your readers may be interested to know a little of the
background and reasons for this decision.
The Audit Commission has rated the City Council as a “weak” council
whose overall performance ranks in the lowest 16% of district councils
across the country. According to the Audit Commission, the City quite
simply does not provide residents with value for money, and it is rated
in the lowest 9% in this respect. And when it comes to financial
management, the City is near the bottom of the class, in the lowest 7%
of the country’s district councils.
As an additional insult to its residents, the City levies the 10th
highest council tax of all districts, and a significant number of its
key services are among the top three most expensive in the country.
Even the controlling Liberal Democrat group’s own executive member for
‘better finances’, Cllr Stephen Tall, admitted in the Oxford Mail (9th
November, 2006) that “it is generally acknowledged the City Council is
overall a high-cost, low-performance council”.
Despite this dismal record, the Lib Dems want to turn the City into a
‘unitary’ council. This would mean that instead of attempting to run
just 20% of Oxford’s council services, as is currently the case, it
would have to take over all the commitments of the County Council – such
as education services, social care, highways, fire and rescue, trading
standards, waste disposal, libraries, emergency planning, and the list
goes on.
The Audit Commission hasn’t yet been asked for its view of the City’s
proposal. I think we can guess what it might be.
It was not surprising that the County Council – which is officially
rated as a well-run authority and is aiming to move from its “good”
rating to “excellent” in the near future – voted overwhelmingly at its
meeting on Tuesday to oppose the City Council’s ambitions for unitary
status.
The County has instead called on the five district councils in
Oxfordshire, including the City, to look for radical improvements in the
way that all the authorities work together. If this call is heeded, the
result of their joint efforts will be greater value for money for
council tax payers throughout the county. And for City residents in
particular.
Yours faithfully
Carolyn Ten Holter
Wednesday 3rd
January 2007
Letter to the
Editor, Oxford Times
from Joanne Bowlt
Sir
So in addition
to the £9million maintenance deficit already faced by Oxford City
Council they are proposing to spend another £2.5 million fixing their
IT. This further underlines the Audit Commissions report which found
the council “weak” and suggested it did not offer value for money. If
it cannot maintain its own offices what is it doing to the city? And
worse still imagine what might happen if it were given control of all
services in the city?
Why then, do
City councillors spend another £20,000 to investigate whether a bid for
unitary status is financially viable? Are they not already wasting
enough of our money? The independent report by Michael Chisholm
(Emeritus Professor at Cambridge University) in October 2006 provides
enough evidence that the massive administrative changes that would have
to be made across the county would cost Oxford even more. The report
states that the cost of setting up a unitary authority would be
substantial – up to £17.2 million – and there is every chance that
ongoing costs would be increased. The only way that longer term costs
might be reduced by introducing unitary authorities would be if the
county were to become a unitary authority, thus abolishing the city and
district councils. I imagine that none of our Labour, Lib Dem or Green
city councillors would support that plan.
It is not our
two-tier council system that is not working so more “gerrymandering”
(David Cameron MP) or “rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic”
(Michael Chisholm) will not help. The City Council needs to focus on
getting its own finance in order and managing what it already has
responsibility for in a competent manner rather than building up more
debt in a bid to run an even bigger budget and run up an even bigger
deficit, to the cost of the people of Oxford and Oxfordshire.
Joanne Bowlt
Wednesday
6th
December 2006
Letter to the
Editor, Oxford Mail
from Cllr Maurice Billington
Sir,
I would
advise Cllr Robins (letter 28 November) to study his own government’s
policies on council tax more carefully before jumping to out of date and
boring accusations about the Tories only looking after the wealthy.
His
party’s council tax policy as a whole, including the proposed
revaluation, is unjust because it so unfairly penalises ‘ordinary
people’ – to use Cllr Robins’s insulting and class-ridden term.
Let me
just remind him that under a Labour Government the council tax has gone
up 84%. The same government is now introducing new laws to give
bureaucrats the right to enter law-abiding, decent peoples’ homes, to
record every feature of their homes such as home improvements, number of
bedrooms etc. And for which - surprise, surprise - the homeowner has to
foot the bill.
The
revaluation that Cllr Robins is talking about means that hard working
families and pensioners who have saved, invested and improved their
homes will be subject to soaring tax bills, without any improvements in
their local services. And, if you are lucky enough to live in a decent
area with good schools and friendly neighbours you pay even more! Just
because house prices have risen doesn’t mean that local residents have
more cash to pay higher local taxes. So not just one stealth tax but 3
in one.
Cllr
Robins’s attack on Tories who are trying to protect local residents from
this happening is absolutely appalling. I for one freely admit to being
terrified of his Government’s stealth taxes and will do anything in my
power as a local councillor to stand up for the residents of Kidlington.
Cllr
Maurice Billington
District
and County Councillor Kidlington & Yarnton
Cherwell
District Council
Oxfordshire County Council
Thursday
17th August
Letter to
the Editor, Abingdon Herald
from Cllr Matthew Barber
I was saddened to see the Lib Dem
leaders comments to your story on low morale at the Vale of
White Horse District Council
(Thursday 17th August) . He seems to have buried his head
in the sand on this issue. Staff morale is not just important for the
people working in Abingdon, but it should concern everyone. How can our
staff provide the services that the public demand if they do not
understand the council's plans and vision. It is ironic to read his
comment that the survey was intended to provide an 'honest' picture.
Shouldn't we have a bit more honesty about the state of things at the
Vale. I have spoken to a number of staff personally who feel completely
dejected by the way the Council is being run. It is time for a change in
the Vale, time to treat our staff properly and time to provide the value
for money services that the public crave.
Thursday
17th August
Letter to
the Editor, Abingdon Herald
from Cllr Melinda Tilley
The attitude
of the Leader of The Vale of White Horse District Council Jerry
Patterson is quite frankly astonishing. He sat at the same presentation
I did when MORI presented the results of the staff survey, (although he
didn’t hang around to face questions from the Staff!)
The
results were awful,
time and time again we were told by MORI that the
results were a long way off the national average and what MORI had come
to expect from the numerous local authorities they had surveyed.
It is
remarkable that the Liberal Democrats would fork out £10,000 for a staff
survey and then ignore the results!
Our staff are
totally committed to their Jobs and the services the Council provides
and one fears just what kind of mess we would be in without such a
dedicated team.
It is time for
Cllr Patterson to stop ignoring the issue and to take the necessary
steps to ensure our staff are treated with the respect and also given
the recognition they deserve.
Thursday
10th August 2006
Letter to
the Editor, Oxford Mail
from Cllr Melinda Tilley
What a load of utter nonsense Anne Purse does talk about the green belt
issue.
Her party is split down the middle over it and they have sent her to
cover the cracks with mush.
As she mentions me directly, I would like, once again, to reiterate my
views on the Oxfordshire green belt.
I have consistently said that I would be in
favour of a review of the green belt - as the statute says should happen
from time to time. If some areas are recognized for development then
other Greenfield sites need to be
put back in to keep the totality.
I
believe I am in the illustrious company of Dr. Evan Harris MP and John
Goddard the Liberal Democrat Leader of Oxford City Council.
The Conservatives are not split on this issue; we all wish to protect
the green belt. We are all though, thoroughly fed up with this wretched
Government for giving us all the housing in the first place, and the Lib
Dems for doing everything they can to fudge and muddy the issue.
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