Take a look around to see 'combative' Cook's legacy

If anyone were to ask years from now about the significance of Colin Cook’s time as the councillor responsible for development in Oxford, the best answer might be “look around you”.

For love him or hate him, few could dispute that Mr Cook has played an important role in the progress of some of the biggest and best building schemes Oxford has seen since the war — and, some would say, some of the most appalling eyesores as well.

While the Labour councillor cannot take credit for proposing or designing any of them, as the city council’s executive member for city development, over a decade he has been at the heart of the key planning decisions that have and will shape the look of the city for years to come.

And it is equally true to say that he has been at the centre of some of the most bitter planning controversies as well — with the dispute over Oxford University’s Castle Mill student blocks on the edge of Port Meadow topping the list. They stand, in the eyes of some, as the ultimate monument to Mr Cook’s folly and arrogance.

The row over the accommodation blocks has involved Government ministers, the High Court, leading Oxford University academics and perhaps the most sustained and (belatedly, at least) well-organised planning protest that Oxford has witnessed in living memory.

It has even resulted in Oxford City Council agreeing to change the way it will examine and consult on major schemes on sensitive sites in the future.

But while the row over Castle Mill is set to rumble on for some time yet, Mr Cook’s powerful position in the Town Hall was last week brought to an abrupt end: and not by Port Meadow campaigners, but by his own Labour colleagues.

Campaigners (from left) Sushila Dhall, Sue Gerhardt, Sietske Boeles and Richard Luff with the Castle Mill flats in the background

For having put himself forward for a place on the city council’s executive board following last month’s local elections, fellow Labour councillors failed to vote Mr Cook on. His planning and development portfolio will be taken on by the city council’s leader, Bob Price, leaving Mr Cook acting as the city’s heritage champion.

“I did not make the cut,” Mr Cook told me on Monday. “I enjoyed my time on the executive and I hope the new members enjoy their time. But there are advantages. At least I won’t be getting any more snotty emails.”

And there certainly have been plenty of those down the years —from conservationists, defenders of the Green Belt and proposers of town greens to name a few.

You do have to wonder whether he paid the price for his high profile stands on planning issues.

“I don’t know what was on people’s minds. You would have to ask those who voted,” said Mr Cook.

Opponents like Matthew Sherrington, of the Save Port Meadow group that maintains the student flats in Roger Dudman Way ruined historic views of the city from the meadow, are more forthcoming.

“Perhaps the Port Meadow blocks fiasco had something to do with it. What Mr Cook once described as ‘a storm in a tea-cup’ has become Oxford’s worst planning controversy in 40 years and resulted in a review of the council’s planning procedures which criticised its inadequate community consultation and errors in process.”

Being voted off the executive is not enough for campaigner Sietske Boeles, who has been involved in the Port Meadow and St Clements car park redevelopment campaigns.

She said: “It is welcome news he has been removed from Oxford’s executive board. He was responsible for some good policies, such as the commitment to build more affordable homes, but will mostly be remembered for his callous approach regarding the protection of Oxford’s heritage.

St. Clements traders protesting about car parking

“He should also be made to give up his post as Oxford’s English Heritage champion.”

It remains to be seen whether Mr Cook’s political epitaph will bear the words ‘Castle Mill’.

“I am up for re-election in two years’ time. I will make my decision then,” he said, adding: “Castle Mill wasn’t just a decision made by me. The decision was supported by eight out of the nine members of the planning committee.”

Of course this being Oxford and the subject being Castle Mill, even the voting figures remain cause for bitter disagreement.

“Did I underestimate the strength of feeling? Yes, I think I did,” admits Mr Cook. “But, in planning terms, I think we made the right decision based on the report we had before us at the time. I look forward to seeing the progress of the mitigation that the university is proposing coming to fruition.”

When it comes to regrets, he pointedly suggests he is altogether more troubled by permission granted to the 19.75m tall Newsquest printing press in Osney Mead, home to The Oxford Times.

If pressed, he says he cannot consider Castle Mill an attractive building, but insisted: “I very seldom discuss matters of design. I do not feel myself to be arbiter of other people’s tastes.

“If you buy a dog, you don’t bark yourself. The city council employs planners who have years of experience to advise us. We very much need purpose-built accommodation in the city to free up housing for families to live in.”

Student accommodation certainly put him at odds with local businesses when the council approved plans to build student flats on the council-owned St Clements car park. The scheme will result in a reduction in vehicle spaces being reduced from 120 to 80, but the gripe of businesses in the area was the loss of all local spaces during construction.

It is a question of balancing the needs for car space with student accommodation, with short-term pain during work delivering long-term gain to local businesses, Mr Cook argues.

The grievances of St Clements business bosses like Clinton Pugh, owner of Cafe CoCo, will not, however, be short term.“Colin Cook just does not listen to what people in Oxford want. He has no idea of the damage he has inflicted at St Clements.

“He may have done what he thought was right. But he went into it like a bull in a china shop. “Maybe he was just acting in a way that the other councillors wanted him to respond and he became an easy target.”

Mr Cook’s job as a chief technician at Oxford University’s medical sciences centre has resulted in others wondering how he can be unbiased when his employers continue to be responsible for major and contentious schemes.

“I have always declared my interest and made my decisions without fear or favour,” he insists.

“I have voted against university applications — such as the Bodleian Library’s plans for a book depository in Osney Mead and its biochemistry building — when I thought them inappropriate.”

He points to the fact that he was given “a completely clean bill of health” when an Oxford businessman took the city council to court over the approval given to the university’s £75m Blavatnik School of Government building in Walton Street. A High Court judge rejected David Freud’s bid to launch a judicial review and dismissed his claims that Mr Cook, along with other members of the west area planning committee that approved the scheme, had undisclosed interests.

Colin Cook and head of planning Michael Crofton-Briggs examine plans for Barton Park

Mr Cook will not now be on the executive to see many schemes that have concerned him over years come to completion, such as the new Westgate shopping centre, the 900-home Barton Park scheme, the regeneration of Oxpens and the Northern Gateway, north of Wolvercote.

One scheme particularly close to his heart is in Jericho. Work to end years of uncertainty over the future of the derelict boatyard site next to St Barnabas Church is still to begin. But he points to the fact that the city council’s masterplan for the Jericho Castle Mill boatyard should ensure community facilities are delivered.

“Planning is a very reactive business,” reflects Mr Cook.

“We wait for applications to come in and then respond to that. But in my time I think we have become more proactive and good at giving developers clarity and a stronger steer as to what the council expects from them in terms of development. Jericho is a good example of that.”

He will leave convinced that the tide has turned in Oxford City Council’s favour when it comes to perhaps the biggest planning issue, the expansion of Oxford.

The recently published Oxfordshire Strategic Housing Market Assessment, which found 100,000 homes are needed in Oxfordshire, he says greatly reinforces the argument that surrounding district councils must take more homes.

“We are looking to other districts to take the strain. It will be shown that there are sites in other districts. My concern is how long it takes, given that Oxford is the most expensive city in the country to live.”

Another issue still far from resolved concerns the rents in Oxford’s Covered Market.

Mr Cook and the Labour group currently stand accused of rejecting the results of a binding arbitration in settling the issue of rent increases for traders.

Covered Market traders protesting about rents

The problem, insists Mr Cook, is that the arbitrator miscalculated the final figure, proposing average increases of under one-and-a-half per cent.

Such a small increase would leave the council unable to generate the hundreds of thousands of pounds needed for improvements to the Covered Market.

“I would ask the question of traders — ‘if the mistake had been to the benefit of the city council and rent increases had doubled instead of being halved would they have been happy to continue with the same arbitration?’ I suspect not.”

This is classic Colin Cook — combatative and self-confident.

“Well, you should not go into politics if you are a shrinking violet,” he shrugs. “When you look at some of the disasters in the 1960s, you think ‘how on earth could they have done that’.

“I think we have done better than some of our forebears.

“I suspect that most of the decisions that have happened in my time will be to the benefit of the city in the long term.

“That will be for others to decide.”

Well, it will be for those who have not already decided...