Agenda item

This Council meeting will be held virtually in order to conform with current guidelines regarding social distancing. Normally requests to speak at this public meeting are required by 9 am on the day preceding the published date of the meeting. However, during the current situation and to facilitate these new arrangements we are asking that requests to speak are submitted by no later than 9am four working days before the meeting i.e. 9 am on 2 December 2020. Requests to speak should be sent to Deborah.miller@oxfordshire.gov.uk together with a written statement of your presentation to ensure that if the technology fails then your views can still be taken into account. A written copy of your statement can be provided no later than 9 am 2 working days before the meeting.

Where a meeting is held virtually and the addressee is unable to participate virtually their written submission will be accepted.

Written submissions should be no longer than 1 A4 sheet.

Council received the following public address:

Ms Janet Phillips spoke in support of the question at Agenda Item 8 (Question from Susanna Pressel) to keep test and tracing local on the basis that she believed that a local and publicly-run system – from finding to testing, to tracing, and then encouraging isolation, and providing necessary support for that, was the way to get on top of the virus and that the Council’s excellent Public Health Department should take control back from the national operation.

She urged Council to give its full support to Councillor Pressel’s request for the Leader of the Council urgently to contact the DHSC and our MPs, to ask them to transfer the work of testing and tracing to our local authorities and the NHS, with the necessary funding.

Mr Michael Taylor spoke in support of Agenda Item 17 (Motion by Cllr Leffman) on the basis that the IPCC had said that to avert catastrophe we must stop global temperature rise at 1.5°C.  However, the government’s own advisors, the Climate Change Committee, had warned that there was only a 50/50 chance of doing that if current plans were followed which was why the Bill was absolutely necessary.

The Bill did more to deal with the crisis than other currently proposed measures and had gained wide cross-party support.  It required the UK to play its fair share in the global effort to fight climate change, taking responsibility for our entire CO2 footprint, including international air travel and shipping, and overseas supply chains, recognising the damage caused through the goods imported both manufactured and agricultural.  The motion provided an opportunity for the people of Oxfordshire, through the County Council, to ask the six MPs to treat the climate crisis with the urgency it required. He urged the Council to support the motion.

Mr Charlie Hicks spoke in support of Agenda Item 18 (Motion by Councillor Arash Fatemian) welcoming the intention behind motion 18 to create a new governance structure that puts cycling and walking more highly on the agenda, but asked councillors to scrutinise the detail of such a new structure to ensure it really would get stuff done. He urged that any mechanisms had sufficient budget allocation and sufficient weight to enable decision to carry through Cabinet. He offered a suggestion to make explicit the role of walking and cycling within the Cabinet member for Environment and Transport’s brief as It seemed there was no mention of walking or cycling within any Cabinet member’s responsibility on the council website, despite all the targets and press briefings about how important the council was taking it. In recognition that there were severe resource limitations on the councils and the huge amount of work to be done for EATF2, he also urged that the Council took more seriously the prospect of working with members of the public - from all parts of society: business, people who drive, people who cycle, people who took the bus, people who walked, wheelchair users, parents, delivery drivers, older people, younger people, students and so on - and look also to the world leading universities in Oxford: Brookes - with the Urban Design and Architecture expertise, and to Oxford University - with Transport Studies, Human Geography, Environmental Change Institute, and all manner of departments. It was possible to create such a structure that was open to Oxfordshire, that had representation across local society and built a bridge with institutions, and with goodwill could create a togetherness that would enable those projects to be a success. 

Mr Michael O’Connor spoke in support of Agenda Item 18 (Motion by Councillor Arash Fatemian) as a way of drawing greater attention to cycling and walking, but worried that getting rid of the role of cycling champion, a public role with an independent position and their own voice, would have a counter-productive effect by reducing the time devoted to those issues and removing an independent perspective. He questioned why the cycling champion couldn’t exist alongside a CAG? And whether they in theory could attend the CAG given the ad-hoc, informal nature of CAGs?

Oxfordshire has recently received £2.9m from the government’s Active Travel Fund; £411,000 had been set aside for Oxford North and West. He emphasised the importance of agreeing on a firm timetable, so that it was known when consultations would occur and when changes would come in. He further emphasised the importance of keeping the Council website updated with details of Active Travel Fund proposals.

Ms Miranda Markham, spoke in support of Agenda Item (Motion by Councillor Michael Waine) on the basis that the decision will have a real impact on the local community of Oxfordshire and that she felt everything needed to be done to encourage the government to review this policy.

The Treasury had made a case that abolishing the scheme would save the Government money. However, HMT’s own analysis was deeply flawed, and stands to crystallise losses to the country’s economy and to Government revenues way in excess of any potential benefit and with the likely and terrible cost of job losses in already hard-hit retail, tourism and manufacturing industries.

According to the tourism board, Oxfordshire currently attracted £30 million tourists a year - who, through spending, contributed £2.5 billion to the local economy - which was 10% of the annual GDP and 12% of all jobs in Oxfordshire.  800,000 international tourists visited Oxfordshire and surrounding areas per year - with a ⅓ of all staying overnight. Overnight spend per trip was £492 for an overseas visitor compared to £215 for a domestic one. All in all - overseas visitors spent £32 million per month in Oxfordshire’s economy.

Any change in those visitor’s numbers would be acutely felt by Oxfordshire and surrounding areas. Lower tourism numbers meant less spending, which would significantly affect businesses in Oxfordshire and the surrounding areas. She urged the Council to support the Motion.