The appointment of legal advisors will ensure the Council’s legal interests are properly addressed in the drafting of the collaboration agreement. The procurement of commercial and legal advisors for the partnership will enable work to be progressed towards the procurement and selection of a development partner to support the delivery of development on the site.

The decision is to extend the contract for consultants to provide specialist ecological surveys and advice to inform the next phase of proposals for SOSV.

The consultant has been chosen because of their knowledge of the site and ability to update existing surveys.

A quote has been provided for the work (£38k) and this can be met from the budget that is set aside to progress the SOSV and procured through a contract extension.

Award of a contract for the supply of a revenues and benefits system.  

To award a ten-year contract for the supply of a revenues and benefits system to Civica UK Ltd.

To enable Environmental Health Officers to respond to local COVID-19 outbreaks on a County-wide basis.

1.    To enter into a written agreement with the other Oxfordshire District Councils to allow the authorities to provide support and assistance to each other in responding to local COVID-19 outbreaks (“The Oxfordshire COVID-19 Local Outbreak Control Plan” (LOCP)).

2.    To authorise the Council’s Environmental Health Officers to operate across the other district authority areas within Oxfordshire in delivering the LOCP.

3.    To authorise Environmental Health Officers employed by the other Oxfordshire district councils to operate within the City on behalf of Oxford City Council in delivering the LOCP.

Under the LOCP, the local authorities in Oxfordshire have all agreed to establish a ‘pool’ of Environmental Health Officers who will work with partner organisations to provide the response to local COVID-19 outbreaks (the Authorised Officers). This includes an out of hours service to cover every weekend from 9am to 5pm from mid-September until 17th January 2021 when the regulations are due to expire. These Authorised Officers will be authorised to act as if they were an employee of each of the local authorities in order to exercise any enforcement powers that might be required to manage local outbreaks across Oxfordshire, irrespective of the officers’ employing council, including, but not limited to, attending sites at any location across Oxfordshire for the purpose of inspection, providing advice and assistance to any business owner/resident/landlord/other individual (as appropriate) and serving any enforcement, prohibition or other notice as required.

To accept the delegation of powers from Oxfordshire County Council (agreed at the County Cabinet meeting on 15 September 2020) and to enter into a section 101 agreement with Oxfordshire County Council relating to the control and prevention of coronavirus under The Health Protection (Coronavirus, Restriction) (England) (No.3) Regulations 2020.

To open the dryside at the Leys Leisure Centre; open the Oxford Ice Rink (from October); and hold conversations with the City of Oxford Swim Club about reopening the Leys Pools.

To agree to the following proposals:

i) Opening the dryside at the Leys Leisure Centre

ii) Opening the Oxford Ice Rink (from October)

iii) To hold conversations with the City of Oxford Swim Club about reopening the Leys Pools.

To spend £100,000 of Capital and £134,950 of Revenue in order to support Oxford’s city restart.

Capital:

The Capital comes from the Community Infrastructure Levy (CIL) strategic funding pot, which was specifically made available for the city restart, as announced on 27th May 2020.

The £100,000 has all been allocated towards highways improvements which will increase the safety of the public realm for residents, visitors, shoppers and workers. It breaks down into the following categories:

> Social distancing stencils and signs on public highway footways and lampposts (thousands of signs and stencils in city centre and district shopping areas, which encouraged safer shopping)

> Infrastructure and enabling works to create safe public rest areas, large outdoor seating zones, and where appropriate, pedestrianisation, for hospitality businesses in St Michael’s Street, Broad Street, George Street, and forthcoming at North Parade (benefiting clusters of hospitality businesses which would otherwise not be able to trade viably or at all due to social distancing)

The Planning Policy team has approved the CIL eligibility of all of these measures.

Revenue:

The Revenue comes from the Government’s Reopening High Streets Safely (RHSS) Fund. This fund was announced on 24th May 2020 and its purpose is to help district councils such as ours to introduce a range of safety measures so that people are comfortable to return to work, go shopping or support hospitality businesses.

Oxford City Council was allocated £134,950 to deliver activities which contribute to the safe reopening of high streets in line with set guidance. It breaks down into the following four categories, which were identified by Government as the areas of scope for the RHSS Fund:

> Support to develop the City Centre Vision and Action Plan to help safely reopen their local economies (includes a refresh of the city centre action plan as a city centre recovery plan, a Gloucester Green and market recovery action plan, and a report which compiles the learnings from all the experimental pedestrianisations to date)

> Communications and public information activity to ensure that reopening of local economies can be managed successfully and safely (includes three public information campaigns aiming for the safe reopening of Oxford’s high streets: early summer campaign focused on social distancing in shopping areas, which included guidance about one-way pedestrian flow on Cowley Road and the busiest and most constrained city centre streets; late summer / early autumn campaign focused on safe travelling from outside of Oxford into the city centre; winter campaign regarding safe Christmas shopping and hospitality. Between the three campaigns there is expenditure on advertising, design, branding, printing, designated staff resource, website creation)

> Business-facing awareness raising activities to ensure that reopening of local economies can be managed successfully and safely (all spent on City Centre Business Liaison Officer, a new role specifically focused on communicating with city centre businesses regarding safe reopening, especially on George Street, St Michael’s Street and North Parade)

> Temporary public realm changes to ensure that reopening of local economies can be managed successfully and safely (enabling works, including hostile vehicle mitigation, in order to create safe outdoor seating areas for small clusters of hospitality businesses. Works were undertaken on Broad Street, St Michael’s Street, George Street, Observatory Street and there is a small contingency for other city centre streets).

A Grant Action Plan (GAP) form relating to the RHSS Fund has been submitted to Government. This GAP form outlines the Council’s planned use of the RHSS Fund. The Council expects ongoing dialogue with Government before claims are submitted and the £134,950 is received by the Council.

The Council’s approach has been guided by the following documents:

The national High Streets Task Force 10-point checklist for COVID-19 recovery stages.

COVID-19 Secure: Safer Public Places – Urban Centres and Green Spaces

Reopening High Streets Safely Fund Guidance

Delivery of the Seacourt Park and Ride extension project approved by Cabinet on 12 June 2019.

To approve a virement to provide additional budget for £220k in respect of the Seacourt Park and Ride extension project from the underspend on the Grey fleet budget as the overall project budget was showing a shortfall.