Announcements by:

1.    The Lord Mayor

2.    The Sheriff

3.    The Leader of the Council (who may with the permission of the Lord Mayor invite other councillors to make announcements)

4.    The Chief Executive, Chief Finance Officer, Monitoring Officer

5.    The City Rector

The Lord Mayor informed Council that she had attended the Saraswati Puja Festival, where many children experienced their first writing ceremony and families came together from across the community. She also highlighted the Kilsby Boat project, which had received a significant lottery grant to restore canal boat that would be converted into a theatre and educational space.

The Leader of the Council updated Council on the response to the current consultation being conducted by Oxford Fire and Rescue on the fire service in Oxfordshire. She said this was timely, as she had received a letter that morning from the University of Oxford expressing serious concerns which aligned with the Councils. Councillor Brown explained that she and Councillor Arshad recently met with Rob McDougall, Oxford's Chief Fire Officer, to discuss the county proposals for the future of fire services in the city. Although this allowed them to ask questions directly, she did not find the meeting reassuring. She reminded members that the proposals included lengthening response times and potentially removing Rewley Road and Kidlington fire stations, replacing them with one in North Oxford. She outlined the main points of the response submitted to the consultation, emphasising that Oxford had a significantly different risk profile from the rest of the county and that this needed to be reflected in service provision. She highlighted the city’s population, large student community, concentration of HMOs, high-rise buildings, major hospitals, world heritage sites and increasing levels of lab spaces, all of which added complexity and access challenges. She stressed that these factors required current resources and response times to be maintained. She stated that a centrally located fire station should be retained unless there was clear evidence of service improvement, which she said was lacking. Councillor Brown also raised concerns about the city’s waterways, noting several tragic deaths in recent years and expressed concern that some of the expertise from Rewley Road and Kidlington could be broken up and spread thinly around the county. She criticised the lack of proper consideration given to the community impact report, noting that the EQIA identified negative impacts on Oxford’s communities but failed to mitigate them. She stated that the proposals ignored deprivation as a key risk factor, despite evidence that all of the county’s most deprived areas were urban and that deprivation increased the risk of fire fatalities. She also highlighted that the EQIA identified a disproportionate impact on non-white British communities in Oxford, justifying this on the basis that ethnicity had not been considered a risk factor regarding accidental dwelling fires. She added that on-call requirement appeared to underpin many of the proposals, yet it was unclear what work had been done to address recruitment challenges. She noted that Council had made representations to the consultation. Stressing the need for formal engagement with all majority stakeholders, including Oxford’s education establishments. Furthermore, Councillor Brown added that colleges had only recently become aware of the proposals and were extremely concerned and that the university had now submitted a formal response. She also criticised the consultation survey as difficult to follow and leading respondents towards preferred options. Finally, she said that future growth plans and strategic authority changes should be considered when deciding the future of Oxford’s Fire and Rescue Service. She concluded that Council did not support any reduction in resources for the city, stating that response times and service levels should be maintained or improved.

The City Rector noted that it marked the 100th anniversary of John Logie Baird’s first display of television in 1926. He reflected on whether television had been a blessing or a curse, suggesting it depended on how it was used. He said this applied to most inventions and questioned whether procedures chose to build people up or put them down. He thanked Council for their efforts to build up communities and wished everyone a Happy New Year.