Nigel Martin

The Schools Adjudicator, Sir Philip Hunter, issues his decision yesterday on the admissions criteria for Durham Johnston.

In brief, Sir Philip decided that the criteria giving priority to associated transport from specific areas ahead of families close to the school was unfair.

 He specified that the criteria for 2009 entry should be the same as those for 2008 with distance being measured from the closer of the Crossgate and Whinney Hill sites.

He also directed the Council to review it criteria for future years in the light of this decision, pointing out that in mixed urban/rural areas arrangements involving catchment areas or feeder schools were much more common and were more acceptable.

Sir Philip also criticised the public consultation process and the confusion caused in the mind of local people by the way in which the Council has said things in the past.

I believe this is the best outcome for now. It gives the Council time to get its act together and come up with a workable solution.

One point to emerge from all the debate was the fact that the current criteria actually make no difference to the admissions of all but very few schools in the County, as in most areas there is either no alternative school or no real cometition for places.

My conclusion is that in coming up with new criteria, the Council should look very hard at the areas where there is competition and devise rules that deal fairly with these situations. My regret is that the County Council clearly has not taken this approach in the past.

You can see the full judgement at: DJ Adjudicator decision

A very well-attended meeting hosted by the Schools Adjudicator was held last night at the Crossgate Moor site to hear objections to and arguments about the admissions criteria the County Council has proposed for the school.

There were presentations by David Williams, County Director of Children’s Services, Vanessa Kind, a parent governor at St Margaret’s School and Gail McCardle a paretn from Shincliffe. The meeting was then opened up for general comment and debate. In all, the meeting  lasted more than 2 hours.

Although I arrived late (I had to host a couple of hundred people at college - graduates and their families) I did hear all the debate from the floor.

It is clear that there is a strong level of concern among families in Neville’s Cross about admissions criteria which give preference to those living at a distance over those who live close by.

While there was some evidence offered suggesting that the risk to local families of being refused admission was low, I and most local residents were not convinced. I spoke and referred to the significant increase in new houses in the area which would undoubtedly start to impact on the situation in a few years. There had been a serious problem in the mid 1990s and the likelihood of this recurring gave me grave concern.

In addition, I was told by a resident that the demographic data used by the County was well out of date and that there was academic evidence of a recent population increases in the Durham area.

One issue referred to several times was the lack of real opportunity for local people to comment on the proposals before they were agreed.

While the County Councillor for Durham South claimed that he had ‘consulted local people’ I find that hard to believe as the final proposals only emerged in Mid March when we were all getting ready for the local elections. Indeed, we had about 7 days between the committee papers being published and the meeting at which things were due to be decided (although the decisions was deferred for a few weeks because of division in the Labour Group - see an earlier posting).

In reality, the process adopted by the County Council has always effectively excluded local residents, something accepted by the Director at the end of the meeting.

Nonetheless, I hope I am enough in touch with my local people to have a pretty good idea how they feel about this issue (and it was raised on the doorstep in the local election campaign) and the minutes of the County Cabinet show that I did represent them.

So what next? The Adjudicator will consider the matter and give his decision in about 10 days. He has wide powers including setting the admission criteria himself for up to the next three years. So look out for the result here, which will be posted as soon as I have it.

The attempt by Vimac Ltd to open a lap dancing club at The Loft in North Road has at last been killed off.

Vimac had gone to the high court to ask for permission to seek judicial review of the decision of the local magistrates to refuse a licence.

The high court refusal to allow a judicual review was about as unequivocal as it gets and so we must hope that this is now the end of the matter.

While this is the outcome that the overwhelming majority of the local community wanted, there is still great concern about the difficulty of controlling this type of club under existing licensing law.

The fact that this is now recognised nationally and is being taken up on an all-party basis in parliament shows that those who tried to make local party-political mischief over the issue here in Durham should have known better.

It has been common knowledge for some time that I am retiring from my University post at the end of September this year.

Being Principal of Trevelyan College brings with it the requirement to reside in a house in the College, and with impending retirement, Susan and I will be moving out shortly to allow the place to be prepared for my successor.

From 29 June, we shall be living at 5 Harvest View, Hag House Farm, Pity Me, Durham DH1 5RN, and we shall have a new home telephone number: 0191 374 0712. The e-mail address will remain unchanged.

I shall be easily able to pick up mail sent to the College address, at least for the next three months.

I do intend, of course, to continue as the Councillor for Neville’s Cross (City ward and County Division) subject always to the will of the electorate.

If you read the recent Countywide published by the County Council, you will have seen another telephone number, 07500 125 331.

This refers to the new mobile phone that the County has provided (and has offered to all councillor). I have been told that a local 0191 number will soon be allocated for this mobile phone. I will publicise this when I have it. Ringing this number may well be the easiest way to get me quickly.

I’ve just received copies of a load of letters from County Hall about bus stops.

Firstly, all bus stops in Durham City District are (under Part 6 of the Traffic Management Act 2004, no less) to be made “no stopping except buses”.  So, after the relevant road markings are in place, it will be an offence to park at a bus stop (unless you are a bus, of course).

Seondly, a number of currently unused bus stops will be removed as there are no longer any buses running past them. The ones I have been notifed of (in my area) are:

At Durham School, Quarryheads Lane
Opposite Durham School, Quarryheads Lane
Adjacent to 21 St Margaret’s Court, Margery Lane
Opposite 18A North End
Opposite and adjacent to Inishfree, Whitesmocks

Please let me know if there is an issue with these removals.

Colleagues among the enw councillors at County Hall have been commenting on the current apparent lack of activity, particulalry with the unitary reorganisation.

 I know that there is a lot of activity going on behind the scenes with over 30 ‘workstreams’ aimed at bringing the services of all 8 councils (7 Districts and the County) under the one umbrella, but it is worrying that so little seems to be being brought into the open at this time.

Particularly important is how the new local governance arrangements will work. We are promised some proposals for public consultation later in July, but I am concerned about how little input there has been from the elected councillors.

We really need something to get our teeth into.

The following appeared recently in my university e-mail inbox: 

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Whether you bike to your lectures or your workplace a couple of times a year in fair weather, or are a seasoned cycle-commuter, Durham Bicycle Users Group hopes to send out a message of encouragement this June.

With three events planned for Bike Week 2008, cyclists and would-be cyclists can meet other members of Durham University who regularly cycle to and between its colleges and departments.

They can receive handy hints and advice on cycling matters, improve their fitness and knowledge of rural Durham, join DBUG, and - if these aren’t enough incentives - get some free cake!

During national Bike Week, 14-22 June, DBUG hopes to promote cycling in Durham as a healthy, convenient, enjoyable, pollution-free way of travelling - one which can vastly reduce our carbon footprint in the city.

DBUG is inviting members of the University to two bike rides.

The first is a there-and-back excursion to Finchale Priory on 16 June, retracing the journeys of Durham Cathedral’s monks.

The second, on 21 June, is a more demanding circular loop around Esh Winning, taking in beautiful Durham countryside invisible to motorists.

In between these two events is Bike to Work Cake Day - with home-baked cake for anyone who cycles to work on Wednesday 18 June.

At all three events you can meet and chat to other Durham cyclists who can offer advice and encouragement to anyone who is interested in travelling light on two wheels.

For full details on all of these events, or to join DBUG, visit: www.durham.ac.uk/environment/durini/dbug

Or contact DBUG: bike.group@durham.ac.uk

Our Bike Week events are also listed on www.bikeweek.org.uk

The number of local parents appealing against the County admissions criteria for DJ has grown rapidly and the Schools Adjudicator has decided to hold a hearing on the issue later this month.

My information is that the Adjudicator will hold public meeting at the school on Thursday 26 June at 6 pm. This is to allow parents to make representations.

If there is more information, I will post the details.

In addition, a letter has gone out today from the parent governors of Neville’s Cross Primary School drawing attention to what is going on and letting them know how to make their view known if they have not already done so.

After three months of cones and barrier work, the A167 south of the Cock of the North roundabout down to the Honest Lawyer is complete and everything is cleared away.

On the other hand, apart from a few forgotten cones, to the north of the roundabout all that has been done is a few metres of barrier at the Merryoaks end as pictured.

Given that the spate of fatal accidents over the last couple of years were mainly on this northern stretch, this could be a cause for real concern.

Having spoken to the Northern Engineers Office on Friday, however, I have been assured that this stretch will be completed later in the summer (all being well).

The reason for the gap in the work is that the contractors ran out of the correct kind of barrier!

Apparently, the design of the barriers is non-standard because it has to be erected close to other obstructions (i.e. the trees on the central reservation) and this sort of barrier is in short supply.

This is all rather odd since you would have thought that they could have rather easily measured the total length required when they ordered the stuff in the first place.

The first meeting of the newly-elected Durham County Council met this morning. It was a lively affair.

The first business was to elect a new Chairman and say farewll to Edna Hunter who was the previous Chair and who lost her seat on 1 May. While I have been celebrating the increase in Lib Dem representation at County Hall and the slashing of the Labour majority, I am personally sad for Edna who, with her husband Roland, has been excellent ambassadors for County Durham during her year in office. She has been the first female Chairman of the Council in over 100 years and broke the male glass ceiling at County Hall with great distinction.

But then it was on to the politics.

First the political ‘balance’. As things stood at the start of this week, Labour had 67 members, Lib Dems 27, Conservatives 10 and there were three independent groups, one with 15, one with 6 and one unaffiliated individual. By this morning the independent situation was unclear, one rumoour was that it had gone to two groups 19-3, although the seating in the chamber appeared much more like 16-6. We shall see.

The relevance of the independents is that, in relation to Overview and Scrutiny and after some strong lobbying from the minority parties, Labour said they would agree to minority parties having chairs/vice chairs of some scrutiny committees.

That was the good news, the bad news was that it was only two out of 12 possible such positions (i.e. two vice chairs) and, in a snub to the Lib Dems and the larger Independent group, they would be offered to the smaller Independent group.

Not surprisingly my members were not amused and in response we decided to put forward an alternative slate for the Leader and Cabinet of the Council.

In the end we were defeated by about 66-39 (there are so many councillors now that the clerks had difficulty getting an exact count and I suspect the pro-Labour vote was higher than this). Disappointingly the Conservatives voted against us and with Labour, so now we know where their sympathies lie!

Even so, once the smoke had cleared, both the new Labour Leader and I did agree publicly to work co-operatively to create an effective structure for the new unitary council that will be in place from April 2009.

It cannot be stressed too much how important it is to get effective arrangements in place to bridge the enormous potential gap between what goes on in County Hall in Durham City and the real day-to-day needs of local communities and neighbourhoods across this great county.