Cherwell District Council

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Greens Call for Credible Response to Flooding Threat in Oxfordshire

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Flooding across the county is now a perennial and repeated problem, the North Oxfordshire Green Party are calling for a credible multi-agency response to flooding problems in Cherwell and beyond.

Flooding is now a regular occurrence across the district and in areas like, Banbury, Bicester, Kidlington, Yarnton and Begbroke district and parish councillors have been trying to deal with both the aftermath and the immediate threat posed by these challenging and distressing events.

Much of this is due to the impact of climate change, but there are also problems created by lack of proper maintenance of flood defences, culverts and swales.  Increased development on surrounding areas has also exacerbated the problem, and with huge amounts of additional houses planned for the green fields around villages in South Cherwell, there are now serious concerns amongst residents about what the future holds.

Run-off from areas like Spring Hill are sources of flood water which now regularly hit the villages of Yarnton and Begbroke below. These are areas due to be built on as part of Cherwell’s recently adopted partial plan review (site PR9).

I’m regularly being contacted, both as a district and parish councillor, by residents watching flood water approaching their homes, yet there are very few options open to me to help them. 

Flooding in Garden city Kidlington

These incidents often occur out of office hours. As a district councillor I have an emergency response number to call, but the last time I used that when I was trying to help residents facing flooding in Garden City Kidlington, I was told I should call the police and ask them to deal with it.  When I did so, the police operator seemed bemused that I was given that advice

Other agencies such as the fire service are quite understandably reluctant to tie up vital fire and rescue resources unless property has actually been inundated.  This is quite a distressing situation to have to explain to residents who are trying to prevent that from happening in the first place.

Thames water are usually difficult to reach and often do very little when they are finally contacted.  I hear regular complaints about blocked drains and flood channels as well as pumping stations either not working at all or being unable to cope with the level of flood water.  Again, the only emergency contact I have for Thames Water is the same number that any member of the public can call

The county council will deliver sandbags, but usually by that point the situation has reached crisis level and residents have to hope that they will hold back water which may already be at their thresholds

This just isn’t good enough.  We need to stop treating these incidents as one-off events and put together a credible, structured, multi-agency response that can swing into action when councillors and other local agencies need it. It’s very frustrating as a local councillor not being able to help when residents expect you to have levers to pull that just aren’t available to us

Advancing climate change means that we will now have to live with the escalating threat of flooding on a year-round basis.  Increased development on what are now relatively permeable green spaces, such as Spring Hill in Begbroke will only make matters worse.

This is not a criticism of individual agencies.  There just seems to be no credible protocol about what can and should be done and who should be doing it. We need a central control point that can co-ordinate a response to all levels of flooding whenever and wherever it happens, as well as a local flood task force to ensure flood defences are mapped and regularly maintained.

Advancing climate change means that we will now have to live with the escalating threat of flooding on a year-round basis.  Increased development on what are now relatively permeable green spaces, such as Spring Hill in Begbroke will only make matters worse.

Site promoters promise that they will put flood defences in place, but with the frequency and intensity of flooding increasing every year, most defences will eventually be overwhelmed. Developers are also usually more concerned with ensuring new properties don’t flood, with less consideration for the impact of new developments on existing residents.  Areas that may in the past have been flood free will soon find themselves in the firing line with little hope of holding those responsible to account. I made a video about this last year that you can see below

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Cherwell’s Conservatives Conflicted on Green Issues Yet Again

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During Monday’s full council meeting, Cherwell District Council voted unanimously to support a motion calling on the doubling of tree cover in the district by 2045.

I introduced an amendment to the motion calling on the council to be more ambitious in its proposals and to achieve the doubling of tree numbers by 2030 in line with the council’s declaration of a climate emergency.

Speaking during the debate, I disagreed with Conservative claims that the 2045 target was the only one that was achievable and that the council should only aim to double tree cover “as far as possible”.

We have declared a climate change emergency.  Emergency measures call for committed and ambitious actions, not vague aspirations and get-out clauses.  The climate takes no prisoners.  It doesn’t care what we think is possible, it only responds to what is needed.  We need to move faster and be more ambitious in our climate change mitigation measures and take into account the impact of all council policies on climate change

My amendment was supported by Labour and Independent members, but was blocked by the Conservatives (as usual).

As if to prove the point, in a later debate on the main modifications to the local plan partial review, campaigners from North Oxford Golf Club pleaded with the council to protect their 103-year-old club grounds from proposed development.  This would include the destruction of a large number of trees.  The Council’s proposals also call for the release of yet more green belt land and the virtual erasure of the previously sacrosanct ‘Kidlington Gap’.

Labour and Libdem councillors opposed the motion along with me for the Greens.  The proposals were agreed with all but one Conservative voting them through.

Yet again we see Cherwell’s Conservatives talking the talk on climate change, but when it comes to positive action they default to business as usual

It makes no sense to anyone other than Cherwell’s Tories to propose a measure to increase tree numbers in the district in one motion and then vote in the very same meeting to destroy hundreds of mature trees in the face of massive opposition from local residents and environmental campaigners.

It’s clear from this, and from the lack of any solid progress on the climate emergency proposals 6 months on from passing them, that Cherwell’s Conservatives simply want to box-tick the climate change issue, whilst pursuing broader policies on unnecessary growth that will be hugely damaging to the environment.

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Democracy Devalued by Cherwell District Council

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Last night we saw the Cherwell Conservatives in their true colours as they waved through some fundamental changes to the council constitution despite the report they were based on being full of errors and inconsistencies.

The report itself had not been through the scrutiny and overview process, neither had any councillor, to my knowledge, been previously consulted or invited to comment on it.  It was simply dropped on to the December meeting agenda, possibly in the hope that it wouldn’t receive too much attention from councillors in the run up to Christmas.

This throws up a fundamental question on how the council is run.  Should significant issues of democratic accountability be amended by officers with virtually no input from elected councillors?  I’d argue not.  Councillors are bound by the constitution and the rules governing meetings.  They should at the very least be consulted appropriately on any changes that will affect these rules.

The proposals included restrictions on motions and amendments length, shorter notice periods for questions to council, and the ability to reject motions on the basis of heavily subjective assessments of them being ‘vexatious’ or ‘frivolous’.  They are arguably designed to limit both the scope of debates and, by implication, the ability of councillors to fully represent their ward residents.

Arguments were put forward that these rules already exist on some local councils, yet in Oxfordshire only one out of 5 district councils have similar rules (although with far greater latitude on things like motion length) and only the County Council has anything approaching this level of restriction.  It’s arguable that the County, with usually a far greater number of motions and procedural matters need a more streamlined system, but at district level this has never been an issue in Oxfordshire.

One has to ask what the motivations would be for the council agreeing to these proposals so readily.  It’s probable that after the recent change in the makeup of the council, with more non-conservative councillors being elected every year, the Tories are simply frightened of public debate.

This would appear to be predicated on the Conservatives bare-faced admission that they had already decided how they would vote on issues before any motion was proposed or debate initiated. Barry Wood’s repeated claim in meetings that all his councillors will essentially do as they are told completely undermines the basis of individual councillor representation.

Even though the report containing these proposals was significantly flawed, it was voted through by the Conservatives on the apparent understanding that it could be re-written or corrected later, without the need for further ratification.  That in itself would seem to be a ludicrous approach.  How can any such changes be approved in advance of knowing what they are?

As we have seen on numerous occasions, this is the reality of democracy in Cherwell, where the dominant follow-my-leader Tories vote en-bloc on everything, regardless of the interests of the people they represent.

This was evident during the debate at the same meeting over a second successive motion brought to the council calling on it to oppose the Oxford to Cambridge Expressway.  This included claims from Councillor Dan Sames – the council’s lead on green issues – that he is “passionate” about the environment, whilst simultaneously keeping an ‘open mind’ about a huge motorway being built, possibly through environmentally sensitive areas like Otmoor, which he represents.  Councillors like this voted for a climate change emergency motion and then somehow reconcile that with building a huge motorway.  This shows just how little commitment they really have towards care for the environment.

Cherwell District Council is now the only council in Oxfordshire not to have voted to oppose the Expressway.  As a result they are tacitly supporting it subject only to the final route.  Any route will be environmentally damaging, but this doesn’t seem to be an issue for the ‘Concreting Conservatives’.

The fact that council leader, Barry Wood, is also the Chair of the Arc Leaders Group appointed by the MHCLG to promote the expressway plans, as well as being an OxLEP and Oxfordshire Growth Board member – both organisations with a vested interest in promoting the expressway – seems not to be regarded as significant bias by the council.  I’d surmise that that is the only reason why we’re still having this debate in Cherwell – the instruction from Cllr Wood to his poodle councillors appears to be that they should not undermine his position on all these bodies by opposing one of their keynote projects.

I do not have an open mind about the Expressway and will continue to oppose it at every opportunity in favour of much more sustainable and environmentally sensitive projects such as East/West Rail.  We do not need any more massive major road building projects in this part of the county (or arguably anywhere else) regardless of which route they may take.  The Green Party’s commitment to tackling climate change cannot be overruled by the imperatives of growth for its own sake that lie at the heart of Conservative proposals in Oxfordshire.

You can view a webcast of the entire meeting on the Cherwell District Council website here  http://modgov.cherwell.gov.uk/ieListDocuments.aspx?CId=114&MId=3240&Ver=4