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Yesterday in my piece about the Policy Exchange think tank's suggestion that Oxford and Cambridge ought to be allowed to expand to as many as a million homes I mentioned the work "Car Free Cities" by J H Crawford which I came across a decade ago when looking into Oxford's last Local Plan. In it he postulates a city of a million people with a topology and transport system that means that any two addresses anywhere in the city would be no more than 35 minutes apart by foot and rapid transit system.

The city is made up of many districts of about 12,000 population like strings of beads along one of three overlapping rapid transport loops. Every home is less than five minutes walk from open countryside. And whilst the densities within the districts are amongst the highest on earth (similar to Seoul, for example, although nothing is more than three stories in the reference designs) only 20% of the total 100 sq mile (10 by 10) area is developed at all, leaving all the areas between the beads and strings as open countryside or managed parkland or whatever. Overall then the density is not a lot greater than Oxford's current density and less than the average of Greater London as a whole.

So, for a bit of fun, I superimposed Crawford's one million population city topology onto the ten by ten mile square centered on the current centre of Oxford. Now sure, a million population is only probably about a third of the million households the Policy Exchange report was ultimately suggesting, but if anyone says to you that it would simply be impossible to imagine a million people in the area between Wheatley and Eynsham, Littlemore and Kidlington, you can say you have seen how, and with no traffic and only 20% of the land developed to boot! It would currently take me over an hour to get from the end of one of these loops to about a third of the way out the adjacent one, incidentally.

Now nobody is suggesting that we do this, least of all me. I'm just demonstrating that it would be possible, indeed whilst making more of the green belt actually because all the space would be accessible in minutes rather than in half an hour in the car, it would reach right into everyone's neighbourhood - with open country no more than 400m from every front door. Fitting such principles into existing cities is of course much more difficult than an academic sitting at a drawing board with a blank sheet of paper. They need not be loops for example but twelve strings with termini at the end of each. It would increase average journey times but not the overall maximum of 35 minutes door to door and could be fitted in along existing radial roads as a series of villages.

Incidentally, the picture on the right here shows some of the housing in the ward with the highest density in England, at least that I can find - a "middle level super output area" either side of the Cromwell Rd in Kensington & Chelsea.  I notice from Net House Prices that there have been 267 £1m plus residential property transactions in the last eight years in this post code area.  This is getting pretty close to the densities that would be required in a city such as that in Crawford's book.  It's hardly slum clearance stuff is it!

...female Vice-Chancellors out of 125 or so UK Universities that is.

My employer, Oxford Brookes University, has announced that its new Vice-Chancellor when Graham Upton retires at the end of the academic year, will be Professor Janet Beer, currently a Pro-VC at Manchester Metropolitan University. There are currently just sixteen female vice-chancellors in the UK.

About time too I say. In a bout of thinly disguised creeping to our new leader I think this is fantastic news. I can't remember the exact numbers but I am pretty sure we have had more female students than male for some years now (in the hall of residence I live in the balance two or three years ago last time I calculated was more like 60-40 female-male). We actually don't do as badly as some institutions in terms of women in "emerging" senior academic positions (though not nearly well enough), but our institutional heads have always been men.

Janet seems to have all the right credentials, though I am still a bit mystified as to why we all got the opportunity to grill candidates for Deputy Vice-Chancellors a few years back but "out of confidentiality concerns" we did not get the same opportunity with the new V-C. But it sounds to me as if the panel have made an excellent choice. Putting us a generation ahead of that "other" university down the hill I suspect (where they even still have different academic dress for women on the statutes).

Some day the glass ceiling will not just crack but will shatter into tiny pieces. With this appointment we will have an equal gender balance in the Senior Management Team itself I believe (though I'm forever losing count of who the various Pro V-Cs are!) But only two out of seven heads of non-academic directorates still and overall in the university whilst two thirds of all staff are women, only just over a third of senior management positions are filled with women.

So, whilst her gender is clearly not the only reason for appointing Janet, as her CV readily attests, it is a great move for the university and a step closer, I hope, to more widespread equality of opportunity for the majority of our students and staff.

Technorati Tags: Oxford Brookes University

As mentioned on ConservativeHome today, all credit must go to Welsh Tory leader Nick Bourne for sticking to his guns after complaints were made about a blog post in which he unashamedly attacks the BNP:

"One worrying feature about the Assembly election campaign was the increase in votes for the BNP.

"Whilst the turn out in the Assembly elections went up slightly on 2003, it was still woefully low, particularly if one compares it to the sort of turnout achieved in the French Presidential elections of 85%, the 44% that was achieved in Wales seems derisory in comparison.

"The growth in votes for the BNP is, however, worrying. The message of racial division, which they put forward anti-immigrant, anti-Semitic, and anti those Britain’s who are of immigrant descent, is rightly something which the four main parties abhor and condemned on Equality Day during the election campaign. "

However, I can't help but remember this piece also on ConservativeHome a few months ago, showing that 12% of Tory voters ranked the BNP as their second choice party. Are they sure that "99% of those 180 complaints were from BNP activists?"

Technorati Tags: conservatives, BNP

Okay, so it's time to give a little plug to my other little venture - "The 1909 Group".

At Harrogate conference in Spring, several of us put our heads together and wondered how we might bring "left" and "right" in the Lib Dems together. In ALTER, our Land Value Tax and Economic Reform campaign group, we just knew we had the answers, or at least the seeds of the answers, to providing both the likes of the Beveridge Group with funds for their high spending ambitions and the "Orange Bookers" with the means to encourage lively and profitable free markets.

The answer was given us nearly a hundred years ago by Lloyd George drawing on a long history of liberal economics. Economics that we have by and large forgotten, subsumed in the argument for an against capital pursued for the last century by Conservative and Labour alternately.

The Free Trade, anti-monopoly, anti-protectionism but pro-individual economic success ethos that pervaded the political scene for the best part of half a century straddling 1900 was the elusive "Third Way", derailed by warfare, national and class-based for most of the succeeding century. And we reckon that if we can rekindle that spirit, we can give the Lib Dems a distinctive, radical liberal "narrative" to use the current buzzword that both respects opportunity and hard work and protects the vulnerable and the public services people have become accustomed to.

So, check out our site - part group blog, part campaigning site - we're hoping to have an inaurgural meeting in Oxford over the weekend of 9th-10th June during the Green Lib Dems conference and possibly a more visible launch at Brighton if we are organized in time.

I noticed Antonia Bance the other day getting exercised about why planning decisions are an area committee function in Being a councillor - the joy of planning.

I wonder if Antonia knows the full history of what has been the longest running disagreement between the political groups since planning for local government "modernisation" started in 2000 or so. And the reasons for the disagreement, I think, are quite profound; an apt allegory of our ideological differences. Of course all this must be set against a background in which, for a variety of reasons (and I personally don't hold planning officers primarily responsible in this), perverseness, lateness and downright badness of planning decisions are key performance indicators in which Oxford City Council seems to be perpetually well placed to top the league tables!

It is a pretty fundamental and often quoted attribute of liberalism that decisions should be taken as close as possible to the people affected by them. Development control is, to some of us, an important illustration of that principle. Development control is one area of a council's functions that can involve local people quite intensely even when the matter they are concerned about is extremely local. I would go further if I could and devolve most development control decisions to Danish style local planning councils that cover only a few streets, a neighbourhood, but in the UK context the closest possible level is for the representatives directly of the area in which the application occurs to decide the issue in an open forum where local people have the opportunity to have their say.

Antonia writes that "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 Òquasi-judicialÓ decisions."

This is not a reason I've seen put quite like that before. But more importantly it is not a justification for centralised development control, but against the ridiculous government regime of so-called standards in public life that, in particular when it comes to councillors, presumes that people are complete idiots who cannot tell the difference between helping out your constituents and doing things that "fetter discretion". When the decision was originally taken to devolve development control to area committees it was not an argument that was made publicly that I remember, not least because the patronising standards regime was not in place. And further, a similar situation pertained anyway in the old system, as a planning decision is a decision of the authority, and any one of them, especially contentious ones, could be called into Full Council at which point the same prejudicial activity would have to be declared.

The proper response to this objection is to get the standards regime that circumscribes far too tightly what councillors can and cannot do and what their personal interests are in any discussion and decision (not merely development control) changed the better to respect peoples' basic honesty and ability to distinguish for themselves when someone has a personal and/or prejudicial interest if and when it comes into question.

Anyway, she goes on: "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."

However, even if you are taking a position that would be "prejudicial" by openly campaigning for or against a particular application, you would still be wise to base all your arguments on sound planning grounds in any case. The "wider needs and opinions" cannot shout louder or be more persuasive than purely "planning considerations".

And then, "in particular, making these decisions in local community centres in front of oneÕs 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."

Which I just find perverse, though sadly from observation, very true. The idea behind getting decisions and their discussions made in public in front of one's electorate was so that said electorate could better understand the reasons why sometimes objections could not be taken into account (and couldn't whether they were in the Town Hall or the community centre). However one thing that Oxford City Council has resolutely refused to look into, despite several promptings from myself at least and others in the past, is to put an end to this ridiculous charade that people get five minutes to object in total and the applicant gets five minutes likewise to respond.

The justification given by the council's lawyers for this stifling of public debate has always been that under the Human Rights Act (there it goes, getting its bad rap again) a "fair hearing" in what is a quasi judicial process must mean that both sides get the same mount of arguing time. The technical term for this advice is "bollocks" in my opinion. Other authorities, most notably the one we went to visit when looking at area committees, Eastleigh, do not have this rule at all. Open discussion is encouraged, questionning of both objectors and applicant is encouraged by all in the room. When the public discussion is over and people have had reasons why their objections are not material in planning law and so on there is little left for councillors even to discuss. They frequently are able to move straight to a vote or provide to the applicant's satisfaction likewise why they won't support something. Sometimes they even have time to get agreement from the applicants to change things they hadn't realised would be contentious and so come to better decisions based on communities and applicants owning a responsibility to each other.

Contrast this with Oxford where the artificial time limit then prompts councillors often into a long speculative discussion of what the public might have said as well if they had more time, and fleshing out their objections to form tenuous but technically justifiable reasons for refusal rather than a basis on which to move forward.

Lastly, this shows a common misconception about planning and planning applicants in my opinion. There are costs, often big costs, of late decisions. Peoples' businesses, livelihoods, and homes depend on planning decisions being made reasonably and promptly. The cost of financing a site lying idle to the developer alone (let alone wider costs of dilapidation or lack of delivery of affordable housing) for a year until an appeal rules that the councillors were being perverse and small 'p' political all along are costs that can never be recovered. The result of pitting applicant and objector in a prolonged battle rather than a constructive dialogue about a way to achieve some of what both want out of a site is further antagonism towards any development and a feeling of loss of control over what's happening around your neighbourhood.
Antonia goes on: "Planning - Òcan this building have an illuminated fascia?Ó Òcan this house have a porch?Ó - also takes up vast amounts of time."

If either of these applications come to committee it would be because someone had made enough of a fuss to get them there through a call-in. They would both normally I am sure be delegated to officers. If you find these ones boring, control your fellow councillors!

"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 donÕt make the decision. But where it comes to the more minor decisions, it just doesnÕt seem like the best use of eight councillorsÕ time."

If you are prepared to delegate such decisions, even to other councillors, then why not to officers? One aspect of the development control system that did change under Labour's previous administration in Oxford was to reduce the number of applications dealt with by officers. It should have been the other way round. Open discussion leading to better understanding by both public and applicants of their rights and their responsibilities to each other followed by a realisation that officers did in fact usually get it right and could therefore be trusted with more delegation. And as I have already noted, you are still bound by the same regime of unfettered discretion since at any time you could find yourself making the actual decision as a result of a call-in to full council.

"IÕd 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. IÕd happily attend a city-wide planning meeting at another time, either as an advocate for local residents if thereÕs something controversial, or to be part of a panel deciding on applications for other areas."

I don't see the dichotomy here. You could have as many meetings as you want each month - if there was the business to fill them. Centralised planning committee was very onerous. Imagine all those undelegated decisions that come to each area committee bundled up, add another bunch where councillors call in ones from other areas that they couldn't do under the original area committee structure but would be necessary in a centralised structure for consistency, and we used to have two scheduled half days per month and often overspilling to the Friday's adjournment day as well. All you succeed in doing is abrogating responsibility to someone else on matters that are usually really local and properly dealt with locally, and shutting the public out of even more discussion and "planning education" by holding them centrally and almost certainly during the working day.

"Members of the licensing committee (like me) arenÕt allowed to decide on licence applications for pubs in the ward we represent; why is planning different?"

The real question is why you are barred from taking part is a discussion of something as important as a license to your local area. Two wrongs do not make a right. Yet another example of Labour's utter mistrust of local councillors deep down.

"By all means letÕs devolve decisionmaking as much as we can, but itÕs 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."

Then look at ways of improving that rate of throughput. Whenever I've been along to an area committee (and okay, it's the one with twelve members) it always seems to me that every one of the councillors has to have a five minute opinion of the scheme under discussion, often including spending at least another five minutes discussing and explaining to objectors not why their points can't be accommodated but why they can't ask a question after their five minutes set-piece is finished!

The arguments for centralising development control all seem to focus on how much easier it would be for councillors to meet targets somehow and ignore the basic tenet that decisions be taken as closely to the people they affect and by people who are accountable to them as possible. There is no "out of the box" thinking going on about how to make better decisions, better owned by both applicants and objectors, and a better understanding of development control issues and why sometimes people can't have everything just how they want them.