Wantage Town Mayor's Charity Ball

I attended this last Saturday evening, but where has the time gone since then? It has been a very busy week. However, I do wish to record that this was an excellent evening at Wantage Civic Hall. Music was by "Out of the Blue" and there was a wonderful performance of Riverdance which had us all tapping our feet! Proceeds from the event were donated to the Wantage Advice Centre, who are doing excellent work, especially during these times of recession helping people with debt problems. Oxfordshire MIND was the other nominated charity by the Mayor Patrick O'Leary. It was good to see old friends and new.

St. George's Day

Today I attended a Citizenship Ceremony at the Town Hall in Oxford which was conducted by the Oxfordshire County Council's Registration Service. Ceremonies take place each Thursday, but today was a special occasion because not only was it St. George's Day, but we welcomed the 5000th person to become a British citizen in Oxfordshire.

The decision to implement 20 mph speed limits in Oxford also took place today at County Hall, it will be interesting to see how this will be enforced. Oxford is the second city after Portsmouth to bring in such measures.

Finally, I ended up at Wantage and Grove Traffic Advisory Committee where we looked at many local issues which need attention. We had the discussion regarding the speed limit reduction at Mably Way, and it looks like we are going to have to wait for the countywide review of all speed limits. So not a quick decision on this one. Let us hope there will be no more accidents in the meantime.

Public Health and Community Safety

These are two of the issues I pursued at today's Cabinet at the County Council. The Public Health Report for Oxfordshire has been published and it was interesting to hear it reported on the news this evening as the 'demographic time bomb'. I sat on a scrutiny review commissioned by the Joint Health Scrutiny Committee where we spent many hours of the last 18 months looking at all aspects of this. We made many key recommendations which were reported to Cabinet in January. You can read the review here

Today, however, it was time to revisit the problems and highlight the concerns made about the challenges we face to deal with this in the future. Certainly, I was pleased to see the reference made to carers and how current health services and social services would collapse without them. It is time their role was officially recognised and they are given the support they need. Government is slow in ackowledging this. The full Public Health report is available to read online.

The County's Audit report was also looked at and it is well known that the 'excellent' 4 star rating was lost some time ago, especially due to their poor record on Children's Services. However, today I highlighted aspects of community safety which need to improve especially with regard to deaths and serious injuries on the roads. Funding for community safety schemes were taken out of the budget about 2 years ago and this would have helped to fund schemes like zebra crossings and road safety measures which may have helped to improve this. It will also be interesting to see how implementation of 20 mph speed limits in Oxford will go ahead, which is up for a delegated decision on Thursday. I know there is a debate about police enforcement on this.

Speeding is known to cause accidents, and certainly, Cllr. Jenny Hannaby and myself have been looking into the reduction of the speed limit on Mably Way as the doctor's surgery had contacted us after a resident was badly hurt on the crossing recently. This followed a fatality there just over a year ago. This will be discussed on Thursday at the Traffic Advisory Committee in Wantage. We arranged for a speed survey to be undertaken there, so it will be interesting to hear the results.

Wantage Town's Annual Meeting

Tonight I attended Wantage Town Council's Annual meeting. There were quite a few members of the public present which was good to see. We had a presentation about the Wantage Civic Hall from the Wantage and Grove District Arts Guild and heard about the possibilities of using it for the community and arts facilities. There were reports from the various town council committees and the district and county reports. I was pleased to present a report on behalf of the County Council especially focussing in on local matters. There were a number of questions from members of the public on various topics.

Last night I was at the local Neighbourhood Action Group in Wantage where we discussed policing matters. Street lighting and footpaths and pavements came up as they did tonight. Maintenance of our roads seems to be a very popular subject at the moment. Anyone who wishes to report a pothole can do so at the Oxfordshire County Council website online or telephone: 0845 3101111.

Smart Meters

Today at the County Council's full meeting, I proposed a motion calling for a scheme to introduce 'smart meters' for hire or to buy from local libraries. This was to make it easy for residents who wish to find out how much electricity they are using in their homes to then be able to reduce their fuel bills. This not only helps households during the recession, but helps to reduce carbon emissions and tackle fuel poverty. Too many of our electrical appliances, particularly televisions on 'stand-by', guzzle up energy without us realising it. By plugging in a 'smart meter' you are able to find out how much electricity is being wasted unnecessarily.

The BBC thought it was an excellent idea and I was interviewed on Radio Oxford this morning giving the merits of this scheme which was introduced in York last year with much success. A resident from North Leigh, nr. Witney was also interviewed telling us how much it had helped reduce his energy costs.

But, surprise, surprise, the ruling group voted it down despite their national leader's support for the meters. There is always a problem when it comes to trying to get the County Council to take on an idea - they rarely want to do it and always put obstacles in the way. This would have been a real opportunity to try to get families to help themselves during this recession, but sadly we will have to wait another day.

Two of our motions did get through (with a struggle and with amendments). One was to get supermarkets to reduce their packaging - not before time! The other motion we put was in favour of keeping the opt-out clause for the EU working time directive for Oxfordshire's firefighters. This is to enable our retained firefighters to continue to work without being penalised especially in rural areas. Both of these motions involve writing to relevant ministers - so not too hard a task to do. Let us hope they take notice so that today's long day of debate has not been in vain.

Can We Transform Oxford?

There is a lot of discussion at the moment regarding the County Council's plans to Transform Oxford. Basically, this is re-vamping an old idea to pedestrianise the city centre. In principle this sounds good. Many people have welcomed the pedestrianisation of Cornmarket (if we try to forget the problems with the resurfacing!), so how about the rest?

Queen Street is first on the list, but at the moment this is causing problems because there is no plan to deal with the buses. So the proposal is for an 'interim measure' which allows buses to drive through the street without stopping at all. Complete madness - everyone will have to try to avoid buses in all directions but can't get on one!

Many people come into Oxford by bus, indeed this needs to be encouraged, but if the buses cannot drop off in Queen Street then there needs to be a properly thought-out plan. However, as is usual at the County Council, the ruling group are not forthcoming about how they will deal with this.

One way we could improve the situation with the bus companies is to introduce joint-ticketing and joint timetabling, and this could be done by entering into a Quality Bus Partnership. This can now be done through the Local Transport Act 2008 which makes it possible for local authorities to act as an 'honest broker' in co-ordinating travel with bus companies.

I tried to get a motion through council on this very topic over a year ago, but this was voted down! All sorts of arguments were put up against it without realising the true implication - that we are a year further down the line and still no progress. Nothing is more frustrating than having to buy separate tickets for separate buses when one could do - it could be a Smart card or it could simply be a paper ticket. It doesn't matter which it is, so long as it is accepted by the bus operator - we don't need to get bogged down with the details - it just needs to work by having the county council dealing with the payments to the bus companies. My motion would have started this process as a pilot project in this area to be rolled out to the rest of the County. It would have been perfect timing. See my previous post on this topic here - as you will see it was almost exactly a year to the day - and April Fool's Day (who's the fool now?)

But there is no political will at the County Council to solve this problem, they just sit there blaming the bus companies themselves instead of trying to make it work. Transform Oxford is going to take a long, long time at this snail's pace. Positive discussions with bus companies should have been in place a long time ago - well before now. My guess it will remain 'Just A Vision' for the foreseeable future. What a pity an opportunity has been lost!