It has been another busy year working on the Councils Performance Plan making sure that we have continued to improve services. Over the past three years, councils working with the government have changed ways in which we work. There is far more emphasis on partnership working with other councils, police, business and the voluntary sector. The Council webcasts planning, cabinet and council meetings and from April will also include scrutiny, audit and corporate governance and some high profile licensing committee meetings. For further information visit www.southoxon.gov.uk/webcasts. We have a really good website www.southoxon.gov.uk and our newsletter ‘Outlook’ is very well read and full of information.
With your help recycling has risen by more than 50%. The introduction of the brown wheelie bin for garden waste has been a huge success with more than 9000 bins being collected. We cannot be complacent as there will be heavy fines if we do not reduce waste going to landfill. We intend to make it easier for everyone to recycle looking at different methods when our contract with Grundons is re-tendered.
We have put £1.4m towards affordable housing this year and over the years much more. Money is not the issue it is actually the land owners bringing land forward and the hold up of large housing schemes in Didcot. We have worked with Parish Councils to achieve some very good schemes such as Goring Heath. Properties are not all to rent but shared equity helping people to get on to the property ladder. We have reduced homelessness to single figures which not only helps people but reduces the council’s costs.
We continue to fund 8 PCSO’s working with the police to help reduce crime. We have invested a total capital budget of £1,379,000 towards CCTV cameras in Wallingford, Didcot, Henley-on-Thames and Thame. There is also a deployable camera for use in the villages which is a pilot and has yet to be evaluated.
As part of our commitment to improve sports centres we are investing £3,386,000 of which £2,807,000 is for the Henley-on-Thames centre. There has been a delay in the Henley scheme which has now started. However the other sports centres are completed and are now high quality facilities and as a result we have seen an increase in their usage. We are able to afford this money by the community fund, i.e. interest on the investment from the sale of the council houses 10 years ago. In Didcot the 5 screen cinema will open this Easter and the Arts Centre will open early 2008. We have made an investment of £48,000,000 over many years into the provision of the Orchard Centre, a new commercial centre for Didcot. Didcot is the growth area for South Oxfordshire and need to have our support to gain the necessary infrastructure. We have given capital money grants to villages and towns for their improvement scheme such as the play area and village halls. There are council bursaries for young people to help with their sport, music or arts. The young talent in our area is amazing and these bursaries give the young people a real boost some may even make the Olympics. New is revenue grants to voluntary organisations as they told us they did not need capital but certainty of revenue for at least three years.
Environmental Health has had a very busy year with the Licensing Act but we coped with all the applications and now we have to look forward to the smoking ban in July. During the year we joined the Benefit and Financial Services with the Vale of White Horse Council. A contract with Capita for the service has increased the quality plus saved the council £500,000. We are discussing with Capita Customer Service improvement by introducing a Centre, already more than half the calls that are taken come through a Capita Customer Service Centre. Customer satisfaction that we have to collect for a government target has steadily increased over the last three years apart from waste.
Cleaniliness 62 - 73%
Waste collection 82 - 81%- reason being new scheme – brown wheelie bins introduced
Sports/leisure facilities 51 - 58%
Planning continues to improve, applications are turned around much quicker these days. The government reward the council for reaching their targets which enables us to employ staff. We are pleased to say we have been able to reduce the enforcement cases during the year and continue the good work. There have been some high profile cases:
We have worked with officers to find 5% savings across the council without removing services. This has enables for the second year running to have no increase in your council tax for SODC services. We could have reduced the tax this year by 2.2% but then next year we would have to increase as the government grants to councils are so unknown.
If you have any questions I would be pleased to answer.
Councillor Felix Bloomfield
(As far as Ewelme goes, there wasn’t very much in this copious report that included us was there? The Editor)