Vale Leader’s Report to Full Council, 16 July 2025

I wanted to use tonight’s report to look back over the last few months and reflect on our achievements and progress since we sat in this chamber in May, celebrating some milestones as I think we should all be proud of what this council has achieved.

Since I last spoke, Vale has again been listed in the top five recyclers in England, with a recycling and composting rate of over 60%. This is a repeated achievement and sits alongside a new accolade, as one of the top ten performing district councils in the country for taking action on climate and nature according to Climate Emergency UK.

In addition to this, the latest round of the Climate Action Fund has again proved incredibly popular.  Applications from community groups include biodiversity and climate action projects across the Vale, forming part of our efforts to reach district wide climate targets.

We are also investing in our own properties and some members were lucky enough to join a tour of the White Horse Leisure and Tennis Centre in Abingdon to learn about the installation of solar panels reducing the carbon emissions at the centre. Further investment has been put into a new cycling and pedestrian bridge in Abbey Meadows as well as the Community Park and Multi Use Games Area in Steventon and Drayton which we have approved tonight.

Our own not-for-profit letting agent White Horse Lettings has helped over a thousand people find affordable homes locally since it began, creating around 50 new tenancies each year. The service connects private landlords with potential tenants in need of housing, matching people with a suitable, affordable property and continues as a key part of our housing strategy.

With the summer holidays upon us it was also a delight to see Abbey Meadows Outdoor Pool open early this year with swimmers being able to take advantage of the sunny weather over recent weeks. It will be running a full programme of events over coming months to complement the free Family Fun Days, covering a huge range of sport and exercise sessions across the summer holidays.

For more sedate pursuits we were very happy to host the first Culture and Heritage Network Event which brought local groups together from across Southern Oxfordshire to discuss the future of local museums, cultural organisations, and heritage sites. The ambition is for this to become a regular event.

The White Horse Lottery has just given away £9000 to eight community groups including Vale Community Impact and Sustainable Shrivenham. The lottery is great way to raise the profile of good causes around the district, as well as generating over £100,000 for them over the four years since it launched.

As we can see from the rest of this evening’s agenda, planning is a clear focus of our council, important to local communities who should be able to have a say over the future of their settlements and the shape of the district, and I am glad that we are producing a robust response to government plans to reduce the democratic voice in this area.

I was honoured to be invited to the Planning Awards last month to celebrate the nomination of the Milton Park Local Development Order that our team created to help shape this important business asset. From that event we are working towards a Sustainable Economic Growth Roundtable with some of the biggest names in business across Southern Oxfordshire this Autumn to recognise the huge centre of innovation and growth we have right here in Vale.

In early June we saw the Joint Local Plan reach the first stage of its Examination.  Our small team of officers, supported by Cllr Foulsham held their own against a barrage of questions raised by developers and neighbouring councils; we expect to hear from the inspectors on the next phase of examination in the coming weeks.

This document, along with our new Council Plan, sets out the priorities we want to see enacted in our district in the short period time we have available to us and with our financial future remaining uncertain.

The government’s recent announcement of the fairer funding scheme has brought its own concerns with the idea that funds will be channelled to areas deemed most in need, and councils such as ours missing out – it is hard to see how this arrangement could ever be described as fair, and we are responding to the consultation as appropriate.

However, I do not want to end on a negative, indeed, if we consider everything we have already achieved since May, I would like to reiterate the importance of local councils to their communities and when I say local, I mean ‘local’.  

For as long as I have been a member here, our council has always believed that when it comes to councils, smaller is better. Our proposal, Ridgeway, alongside Oxford and Shires to our north, would create two councils large enough to be thriving, economically viable areas, providing high quality services, combining the talents and experience from years of delivery.

As well as working with colleagues involved in this bid, we have engaged with our residents, parishes and businesses over the last six weeks to help us understand their views on local government reorganisation; I was able to attend two of the public engagement events held in Vale and was happy to see the positive reception of the majority of people who spoke with us.

 It was interesting to hear from residents concerned that their communities could be swallowed up by the expansion of the city council, or those who were worried that their voices would be lost amid a larger county-wide council.  They seemed happier with the idea of a smaller, more responsive council, with a strong local voice, and a track record of delivery.

This week we met with town and parish councils to explain the benefits the Ridgeway Council could bring, and to reassure them that we would like to see them protected or even strengthened by any changes government makes.

Tonight, this phase of our public engagement exercise ends, and now it is the task of officers to go through the data collected and gather the views of our residents to inform our bid. As of this afternoon the number of responses to the online survey was over 2000, in addition to the 100s of in-person conversations we have had over this period.

Sadly, we have no say in the final decision, which lies with the Secretary of State, however we do have the power to put the best argument forward, and the many milestones we have noted tonight can all form part of the positive story behind our bid for a strong Ridgeway Council.