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Last weekend my mother was down visiting me in Oxford. On Sunday, for lunch, we wandered into town and went to the Castle/Prison site. Apart from anything else I haven't been up the castle mound to see what the view is like. These days, I thought there was a promise to make publicly funded museums free to access. I was surprised therefore to find that the little museum at St George's Tower was apparently charging to get in, and that you had to pay to get up the castle mound itself.

This whole development, resulting in a posh hotel that few in the city can afford to stay in, some apartments that few in the city can afford to buy, a bunch of brand name eateries and some open space, cost the tax payer some £6 million in the form of a SEEDA grant and the lottery player some £3.8 million - getting on therefore for nearly £10 million of "public" money.

I'd like to see the books on this development. I was on the planning committee when it got permission. Nno thanks to me - I thought the Jeremy Dixon building jutting out in front of the castle mound was hideous on plan, and it has turned out mediocre at best in my opinion - but the then doyen of planning committee had fallen in love with Dixon's work and couldn't be persuaded otherwise. We were told the SEEDA money for the commercial development itself, some £4.5 million, was part of a scheme intended to help make developments viable in "failed land markets". Indeed those of us against it were bullied with threats that the grant money would be withdrawn if we delayed even a few weks to try to get a better design. The threat was quite real though because the whole "failed markets" scheme had already proven so contentious that it was abruptly ended.

To suggest that a site adjacent to what will become a £200 million plus redevelopment of Oxford's main shopping centre, right next to County Hall, really slap bang in the centre of one of the hottest property spots in the country, was a "failed land market" was, frankly, laughable, even at the time. Indeed, on the SEEDA web page for the project it describes it as a "Prime City Centre Location"! "Prime" has specific connotations in describing commercial land.

Yes, it had taken several years to find someone to take it on. Since the prison had closed in 1996 (the last prisoner if I recall correctly was, at the time quite infamous, Jamie Blandford) and the whole site was handed to the County Council they had tried several schemes until Trevor Osborne's Osborne Group and SEEDA got involved and the rest is now history. But four years to get a plan for such a site was not out of the ordinary. Capital Shopping Centres next door has been trying to put together an acceptable plan for well over six years now - at their own financial risk of course.

And we can't even climb the castle mound for free. Oxford Preservation Trust is a great organisation and does have to make ends meet. But really, could not a scheme have been organised to make these spaces, in public hands for a thousand years, free to access? Perhaps by charging sufficient rent to the other tenants who would surely benefit from drawing crowds into the prison and castle site. "Brunch" at the "Living Room" restaurant alone was expensive enough to have included a contribution to my access to the castle.

How much did the County Council receive for the 200 year lease granted Mr Osborne? Presumably nothing - it was, after all a "failed land market", or so they persuaded SEEDA, and all the county appears to have wanted out of it was to remove all risk from the council tax payer, which in itself was laudable, but not necessarily the best they could have got for it. Would the development, now that it's complete, tenancies let and apartments sold, have been profitable without that grant? I know a few land agents locally. Not one of them believes that public subsidy was necessary (at least for the commercial part of the development).

So, was it necessary? And if not, who is going to apologise for wasting all that public money? Or is Osborne Group going to pay it back?

And I still, therefore, have not been up my castle mound - okay, that bit's only a quid, but I'm buggered if as a citizen of this fine city I am going to pay to access what has been public land for a millennium.

I found this mildly amusing. The BBC reports that Town planning blamed for obesity:

Poor town planning which limits opportunities for children to take exercise has been blamed for fuelling an increase in obesity.

I have an answer - more tower blocks with broken lifts!

Here's another bewildering use of an ASBO:

BBC NEWS | Wales | South West Wales | Asbo for Pc carrying baton in pub:

A policeman who took a baton into a pub has been given an Asbo banning him from the premises for two years.

David Burrows, 43, will resign from South Wales Police before he can be sacked, Swansea Crown Court was told.

Burrows, of Rhyd-y-fro, Pontardawe, who was found guilty last month of possessing a weapon in a public place, was also given a suspended jail term.

So, was he found guilty of a criminal offense and sentenced or of sub-criminal anti-social behaviour for which it was difficult to obtain a criminal conviction?

Why are people being given criminal punishments AND ASBOs? I mean in my day, if a pub landlord wanted to ban you, he banned you. If you then entered again you could be committing trespass, and presumably if with a weapon or intent, aggravated trespass for which a criminal penalty is available.

Are ASBOs just being used so that politicians can say "look ain't we being tough"?

This is something I've been meaning to write for months, but was particularly prompted to do so by a program on BBC last week about surviving the house price downturn. One guy had built himself a property portfolio worth about £8m (about £5m of which was debt) from a standing start renting a single room in a three bedroom house share five years ago.

He stated, correctly of course, that any numptie can make a killing while everything's rising, but it takes skill to do so in the uncertainty we are now in. His current ploy is to drop leaflets on people in areas where negative equity may be about to bite offering stretched home owners the chance to sell out quickly to him, at a deep discount, but continue renting the same home and with a guaranteed option to buy back again at a pre-agreed premium when things look better.

This sort of thing has long gone on, particularly in the "right to buy" market - albeit with some differences - unscrupulous bucket shop lenders go round offering to lend those who would not get a mortgage enough to buy their council home who then have trouble with their mortgage payments, they offer them a "rent-back" deal which is only just less than the mortgage payments so what they were paying £70 a week for as a council house in which they had no equity was now costing them double that still with no equity.

Anyway - many of you will know that I "run" a group called Oxfordshire Community Land Trusts , which is a mechanism for delivering more affordable housing for the "intermediate market" - those stuck above the income levels that would justify the deep subsidy of social rented housing but below a level that they can afford to get on the ownership ladder. Basically it works by the CLT owning the land and not crystalizing out the gain in land value on every transaction. People pay what they are judged to be able to afford rather than related to the home they need - I would pay nearly full market rates for a one bed flat whilst a family on half my income would get their three bed needs met on half my payments. But I would get twice as much equity as they do. Effectively we are all subsidizing each other through the Mutual Home Ownership Society that takes on the long term debt for the development and which all the residents join.

And earlier in the year we were asked whether this was still an attractive option in a falling market. Obviously it changes the landscape somewhat. Now perhaps more of a problem is that people who could afford to buy outright are unable to get mortgages through no fault of their own. Indeed this could be a boon to the CLT market, because we could find ourselves with more better off residents who would therefore be able to subsidize even lower income houses (it all works on averaging out the total payments you see).

But also by tweaking the model, from a development model to an acquisition model, I believe we could help out those over-stretched households currently prey to the man I mentioned above and with a long term benefit to the success of future CLT projects. In this scenario, the CLT would buy up houses and convert them into mutual ownership. The occupant instead of having to rent from the profiteering speculator landlord would get to keep whatever equity their current circumstances allow them to commit to with the CLT effectively holding the balance. As circumstances change, the household could buy back extra equity (without themselves actually having to borrow anything - Mutual Home Ownership looks more like rent from the occupants' perspective).

What we need to make this happen is access to funds - not necessarily large funds - just a revolving facility that allows us to step in quickly when a household is in distress and lenders start to take action against them - we get them the money to pay off all or most of their distressed borrowing and then the Mutual Home Ownership Society borrows against its commercial facility to take on the house itself with the household's new calculated affordable commitment.

Who has such funds? Well, local authorities have a duty nowadays to try to prevent homelessness, not just deal with it after the fact. Such a scheme has got to be a more efficient use of public money than say, Vince Cable's idea of getting councils to reward previous speculative build by buying direct from builders and converting them to social rented housing (I don't think it's a bad idea - just that mine is better!). Even existing lenders might find it more attractive to convert the loan to a MHOS than to repossess.  In the longer run the CLT ends up with more freehold land that would eventually, when the housing on it has reached its planned end of life be theirs to redevelop in the interests of the local community at that time and in the meantime the distressed owners get to keep their existing home, albeit with lower equity levels and lower debt levels.

Dare I even suggest that this might be a better way to spend $700bn than rewarding the bankers who helped cause the problem in the first place?  Julia Goldsworthy , get in touch if you want to know more!