I am a member of the City Council working group on the creation of a Town Council for the City.

The group met earlier this week (it meets quite regularly) and agreed to a publicity and awareness raising exercise in to begin the unparished city area later this month aimed at gauging local support for the idea.

I and the City Lib Dems are fully behind forming a Town Council as we believe it will be essential to maintain local links with elected members whose main concern is our historic city.

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

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.

The City Council is holding one of its periodic Residents’ Forums on Wednesday 21 May at Durham Town Hall (6.30 for 7 pm start).

The Forum is on the topic of Premises Licences and is for residents of Crossgate and Framwelgate, Elvet, Neville’s Cross, Pelaw & Gilesgate and St Nicholas wards.

Representatives will be there from the City Council and Durham Constabulary as well as local councillors.

Please do attend and have your say.

My Colleague for the Neville’s Cross Division on the County Council and City Councillor for Crossgate and Framwelgate Councillor Grenville Holland, was yesterday elected Mayor of Durham. I wish him well for his year in office.

This morning the Northern Echo referred to Grenville as the last Mayor of Durham City. This is, of course, untrue as provision has been made by the Government for the mayoralty to continue under a Charter Trust arrangement from 1 April next year.

The Charter Trust will be controlled by the members elected to the County Council within the area of the current City Council (22 in total for the time being, 15 Lib Dem and 7 Labour) who will elect a mayor annually from among their number. All the civic dignities, such as the Mayor’s Bodyguard, the Mace Bearer and the Sword Bearer will continue along with the pomp and ceremony that goes with it.

Of course, it will cost to keep this going (I have heard the sum of £80K mentioned as the cost of ‘running’ the mayor) and a small supplementary amount will have to be added to the council tax in Durham City to cover it, but everyone I have spoken to is more than happy to pay a few pence per week to continue our centuries-old traditions.

I received an e-mail from Banks at 3.40 pm today informing me that they are withdrawing their current application and are not proceeding with the appeal.

This is not the end, however, as they will be putting in revised proposals ‘in due course’.

So we remain vigilant.

Here is the Banks Letter.

Those still exercised by the saga of the lap dancing application for The Loft in North Road might like to look at the story in today’s guardian: www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2008/apr/22/planning.communities

A group of MPs and peers have published a report calling on the government to change the law so that lap dancing is explicitly licensed under the ’sex-industry’ rules (that cover the likes of sex shops) rather than the normal licensing procedures.

The report points out that across the country it has proved pretty nigh impossible for the current law to prevent the spread of these places. Indeed, Durham is quoted as the only example where an application has been turned down on appeal at the magistrates court. Even that is being taken to a higher court.

So those who say that the original advice given to councillors was wrong (when they gave a restricted licence) are clearly not supported by the evidence of what is happening elsewhere in the UK. It follows that the Labour minister who told our MP that the current laws were adequate also has no idea what this is all about.

I think there is irony here. I have a strong suspicion that if the council Licensing Committee had originally turned down the application altogether, then the operators would have appealed and the group of people opposing it might not have done the additional work that I think persuaded the magistrates to do the right thing. In that scenario the magistrates may have found it hard to resist an appeal - and I say that because everywhere else, that is the way things actually turned out!

I have just spoken to the Planning Department who tell me that the public inquiry on Banks Ltd application to develop Mount Oswald will start on 10 June and is expected to last six days.

The location of the inquiry is still to be settled which is why objectors have not yet been notified, but letters should be going out soon giving us the details.

Some Merryoaks residents may well have been surprised to see a number of mature trees felled behind the bowling green at Lowes Barn playing fields. Well so were I and my fellow City ward councillor Ron Dickie (independent) as neither of us had been warned that it was about to happen.

The reasons for the felling are a combination of the trees’ old age and problems that the bowls club were having with dampness and fungal growth on their green.

Expert arboriculturalist advice said that the trees should go and some were indeed cut down last year, with the remaining ones this week. New trees have been planted in their place, slightly further away from the green and of a less tall-growing variety.

I discovered all this today after speaking to a committee member of the bowls club and to the City Council Environmental Officer, who also apologised for not having informed the local ward councillors what was going on.

A meeting is being held on Monday morning (31 March) with the Director of Children’s Services, Councillor Vasey (Cabinet member with the education portfolio) and several Durham City County Councillors (including yours truly) to discuss the way forward. I will report back after.

In the meantime I have been doing some research on the issue of whether Shincliffe and Bowburn are closer (by road) to the Crossgate Moor DJ site or to Gilesgate Comp.

Logically, as all shortest journeys would have to pass the junction on the A177 just along from The Rose Tree, the answer to which is the shorter will be the same for everyone irrespective of the particular house they live in.

So try the following: go to the AA journey planner web site and find the distance between DH1 2YJ (Telford Close in High Shincliffe) and DH1 4SU (Crossgate Moor DJ site) and the distance from DH1 2YJ to DH1 1HN (Gilesgate Comp).

When I did this they both came to 4.03 miles! [But please tell me if I got this wrong - although I did do it twice]

Now I have to issue a word of caution here, since the AA routes may not be the ’shortest safe route’ as defined by the County Council, but this does explain why families in both Bowburn and Shincliffe are confused and upset over the future admissions arrangements.

The current county bussing policy talks about conveying children to the closest appropriate school, and no-one at County Hall has bothered to tell people in that area which this is, even though all that has to be done is to measure the shortest difference from the junction mentioned above.

Forgive me if I go on further about this. Suppose, for the sake of argument that it turns out that Gilesgate is closer and that the County sticks to its policy as stated. Then families can still apply to DJ and may well get a place on the final distance criteria, but then they will have either to drive their children over (great for the environment!) or to pay for bus fares. Either way this disadvantages familes with fewer resources to spare.

DJ Governors repeated their view yesterday at their latest governing body meeting that they wish to maintain their commitment and association with the villages concerned, and indeed this was promised by Councillor Vasey’s Labour Cabinet predecessor in public less than nine months before approval for the new building was finally given. 

There is a way out for the Council, though. The actual admissions criteria that the Cabinet want to adopt also mentions a phrase like ‘economic efficiency’ in relation to bussing arrangements, so they have the chance to decide to retain the existing bus arrangements on economic grounds.

But this all shows how useless Labour are at getting things right. One reason this has blown up is because the local county council members have not been properly consulted as the decision making process has gone on. Now, at the eleventh hour, after a massive rumpus, at last we are.

Do they deserve to be relected in May?