Statements on Notice under Council Procedure Rule 11.10(b) may be made.  Statements do not need to be directed to the specific Councillor.

Statements on notice must, by the Constitution, be notified to the Head of Law and Governance by no later that 9.30am on Friday 19^th April 2013.

Full details of any statements for which the required notice has been given will be circulated to Members of Council before the meeting.

Councillor Oscar Van Nooijen at the instruction of the West Area Planning Committee in respect of the business it had been dealing with on the Roger Dudman Way development by Oxford University for student accommodation, made the following statement.

“Council will recall it asked in December 2012 for the Committee to receive a report from officers firstly to consider whether or not the development was in compliance with the planning permission that had been granted, and secondly, whether to consider if there were other matters which needed to be looked at.  This report came to the February 2013 meeting of the Committee.  

The Committee considered the report and noted it and did a number of other things, the most important of which was to instruct Planning Officers to open negotiations with the University to ameliorate the size and impact of the development.  The Committee took that decision because it felt that the emerging size and impact of the development were not acceptable and in line with what it expected to see.  In taking that decision the Committee also noted that what was being constructed as it was advised by officers, was in compliance with the planning permission which had been granted, none the less, it still wished to see some changes.

The Committee did a third thing which was to set up a working party which it intended to include representatives of the Civic Society, other amenity societies and the Protect Port Meadow Campaign to learn general lessons about the way in which the application had been handled, and more generally the way in which consultation should be done on applications of that sort.

In respect of that action point, no further action has been taken.  The reason for this was that the Council soon afterwards received notice of a legal challenge and the advice to both the Protect Port Meadow Campaign and the City Council was that it should refrain from a meeting of a working group of that sort until after the matter had been dispatched.

At its April meeting last week the Committee received an interim report from the Head of City Development.  This report outlined the negotiations that had taken place with the University up to that point, which were nugatory.  An exchange of letters were shown to the Committee which showed that the University was resisting any attempts to negotiate a reduction in the size of the buildings of any sort, but that it was open to considering cosmetic measures to reduce the visual impact of the development.  However no details of those measures were provided.

The Committee was dissatisfied with this interim report and resolved to receive a full report as soon as possible.  Resolved to send the Leader of the Council to negotiate with the Vice-Chancellor directly, resolved to report back to the full Council and resolved that the Chair of the Committee should write to the Vice-Chancellor to explain the position and to remind the University of Oxford that the authority retained the ability to pursue further measures including discontinuance if in the future it decided to do so.

I should emphasise that in the event of the authority wishing to go down that path, that would not be a decision of the West Area Planning Committee, we do not have delegated authority to take a decision of that momentum.  So that would be coming back to full Council, which I suppose was part of the reason why the Committee instructed me to update you this evening.”