OX1 was wrong from the start, but returning to council is even worse

Oxford City Council is set, it would appear, to cut its funding for the City Centre Management Company, OX1 and "repatriate" many of its functions to the bureaucracy of the City Council. In another U-turn from its former support of the idea of a city centre management company the Labour administration thinks that it will be more "transparent" if things are run from the Town Hall again.

New manager 'set to run Oxford' OX1 is to continue as an independent representative body for businesses Oxford city centre is to have a new manager to oversee improvements designed to benefit residents, shoppers, visitors and businesses. Currently £105,000 goes to a company called OX1, a group representing firms which organised events this year to promote the city centre. [From BBC NEWS | England | Oxfordshire | New manager 'set to run Oxford']

When they first pushed the idea back in 1999 I was fundamentally against establishing OX1 as a sort of a "closed shop" of retailers and other economic interests and wanted a much more open structure which would enable users of the city centre, workers, shoppers, citizens, culture groups and so on to take a real stake. I proposed then what I called a "City Centre Management Co-operative".

But in any case, OX1 has never been given the clout or profile it would need to do a decent job. Indeed it has at times become the excuse for a city council not investing in the centre - such as this year when the Christmas lights underwhelmed it was pointed out that it was not the council's job - that it funded OX1 to do that sort of thing (funding which, it would appear, is less than half what the council itself spent on lights ten years ago). Indeed privatizing the provision of Christmas lights was one of the leading drivers behind the CCMC in the first place - we were told that by giving it independence from the council's financial strictures it would be able to produce better investment is such promotional activities.

Oxford city centre is a confusing enough place as it is - not only is the city council responsible for all sorts of statutory administravia, but it is also a significant landlord in its own right. There are competing pressures for its meagre resources there too - it will make a lot of money out of the redevelopment of the Westgate shopping centre if that continues but will likely in turn lose out on its properties in parts of the centre that will lose footfall - such as the High Street, Covered Market and Broad Street areas.

Perhaps more than most other city centres there are powerful local interests outside the city council - the university and colleges own much of the commercial property, as well as, in a sense, "controlling" much of the consumer side of the city's commercial scene. The county council is not such a significant landlord but does control the access in the form of responsibility for roads, traffic and public transport. So there are real conflicts of interest here that could do with sorting out, rather than, perhaps, exacerbating by re-centralizing more of the administrative functions into the city council. And on top of all that, the city council has been utterly incompetent in its execution of the services it provides in the city centre as well - street cleaning, rubbish collection and so on.

So what is needed is to look again at my original idea of a city centre partnership or co-operative in which all users and providers in the city centre can participate and take a real stake. And all the more so in this frightening time when the economic situation may see our high streets decimated with both chain stores and local traders under real threat of closure.

Landlords could be persuaded (led by the city council itself whose investment ability is hopeless anyway) to put their properties (including, perhaps especially, the Covered Market) into such a partnership, allowing finance to be raised for improvements and changing the rent structure which currently threatens to cripple many businesses, especially the local traders. Traders are also not going to survive without customers, so city centre users could be encouraged to join in solidarity with the business they will no doubt regret losing if they go, with perhaps some kind of city centre dividend paid for out of improved revenues from the resultant customer loyalty.

Oxford city centre is a centre for people from throughout the county and region, who have just as little a say in how things are managed there by the city council as do the businesses OX1 was initially setup to represent. Mutualizing the city centre in such a partnership would enable all of these people, as well as Oxford residents to have a real stake and a real say in how their city centre serves them.