Draft February Minutes 2025

• Botley Solar Farm – Cllr Rogers has emailed to advise that the Stop Botley West has been refused to speak with the Flood Officers. Cllr Levy advised Cllr Rogers to email him, and he will try and help.

Cllr Rogers is currently making the response to the Planning Inspectorate from the Parish Council.  The Planning Application has stated that no household will be impacted by the Solar Farm.

A resident has asked if there is any chance that any historical deeds say that Blenheim can’t use the land for the Solar Farm.  Tracey will have a look in the Archive Centre in Cowley.

The clerk brought up the email received from PVDP inviting Cassington residents to a Q&A meeting.  It was agreed that the residents present at the Stop Botley West presentation were to be asked if they would like to invite PVDP to a residents meeting.

8. Correspondence

• Email from Bike Night Committee – The committee have asked if the Parish Council can be used as a contact address as the clerks address and also to have a Parish Councillor on the committee. Cllr Mills has volunteered to be on the committee.

The Parish Council would like to thank the Bike Night Committee for all their hard work over the years.

The Parish Council agreed that there will be a standing order that they will cover St Johns Ambulance cost until such a time that the Bike Night Committee changes the first aid provider.

• Email from Resident re tabletop sale – The discussion was that there would be a tabletop sale in the village hall. Tracey is to liaise with Emily to confirm a date in the spring.  The Parish Council will pay for the hire of the village hall. People can decide if they want to pay for a table and keep any profit or donate any profit made to the Parish Council for the new play area.

9. Reports from County and District & Parish Councillors

• County Councillor

 This is the first report of 2025

A somewhat belated Happy New Year to all the residents of Cassington.

The customary quiet period over the Christmas break didn’t apply this year, for reasons explained below. Apologies that this month’s report is very long and mostly on one topic.

Local Government changes

Government mandate

The Government White Paper on Devolution and Local Government in England was published in December, and the government demanded input from top tier local authorities, ie, county councils and unitary councils, by 10 January.

Among other things, the government strongly hinted that it expected any authority wanting to get the set-up it wants to ask for a postponement of elections in May. Carrying on with elections would be seen as being half-hearted about the new governance arrangements.

It has been made explicitly clear that “do nothing” is not an option, whether we like what we are being required to do or not.

The reorganisation will end up with all authorities being unitaries, of a minimum size of 500,000 residents, ie there will be no more district councils and no small unitary councils. A unitary council does all the things that are currently done separately by county councils (like social care and road maintenance) and by district councils (like planning and refuse collection).

WODC will cease to exist at some time during this parliament, probably in 2027.

And each authority will be part of a Strategic Combined Authority, most of which will have mayors, with the mayor being directly elected and with additional funding in areas like inward investment and infrastructure. As additional powers and money will go to these mayors, the government is calling this devolution, although in reality power is being taken further away from local communities rather than closer. The Mayor is typically leader of a committee comprising the leaders of all its constituent unitaries, and a key determinant of how successful an authority will be can be how much influence those members have on mayoral activities.

It is also requiring these two separate and complex things – unitarization and the creation of combined authorities – to happen at the same time, which is ambitious.

Oxfordshire

Oxfordshire’s letter to the Secretary of State was sent on 10 January. It said that Oxfordshire wishes to be part of the fast track for this process. We are working with neighbouring authorities to create a Thames Valley Mayoral Combined Authority (which will have almost the same footprint as the Thames Valley Police minus Milton Keynes and a very similar footprint to the local NHS commissioning board), and that we want to unitarize at pace. Some parts of Oxfordshire are calling for Swindon to be part of the MCA.

We believe a unitary covering the whole of Oxfordshire best meets the minimum size criterion and will cause least disruption to key services like social services, which otherwise would have to be partitioned between different unitary authorities. Oxfordshire contains about 750000 residents. https://data.oxfordshire.gov.uk/population/current-population/

Each of the district councils has had input to the letter. All of the districts bar the City Council endorsed it. All the party leaders at the County Council have given backing to the County Council approach.

Oxford City Council has suggested we should not be looking to get the first – and hence most empowered – Mayoral Combined Authority, and that instead of a whole Oxfordshire unitary, there should be a new Oxford Unitary using an “enhanced geography”, ie the city will encompass areas like Cassington, Kidlington, Kennington, Botley and Eynsham, and probably Witney and Abingdon. This is unlikely to meet the half million resident qualification and would create a financially challenged authority from the start as well as being unwelcome in many swallowed – up places. The remaining, non-Oxford area would also have insufficient people and be an odd set up.

Democracy and elections

We called for County Council elections to go ahead in May, unless the government could guarantee that a shadow authority can be in place by May 26 and that elections to that shadow can happen then.

This has been misreported as calling for elections to be cancelled. The opposite is true.

We had been advised that we would get further guidance from the government by the end of January but instead got a holding letter. The government finally produced a statement yesterday which confirmed that Oxfordshire was not among the councils who would not have elections. So, County Council elections will be going ahead on 1 May, as we had requested.

The government also sent a letter to the leaders of each of the current Oxfordshire authorities telling us to reach an agreement on unitary council arrangements by the end of March. That will be challenging.

There is much more detail on the County Council website https://mycouncil.oxfordshire.gov.uk/ieListDocuments.aspx?MId=7978&x=

Parish and Town Councils

My belief, and certainly that of my party and our Green colleagues, is that we must ensure that decisions can still be taken locally where that is the best place for them to happen, and where that can ensure that residents can best have a say. So, things like planning still need to happen at a much more local scale than the unitary authority, and parish and town councils need to have stronger local powers, possibly in combination with other parishes where appropriate.

There clearly is an issue that some town councils and parish councils, like Witney, are large and well-resourced, and others are not. Not all of the places in Oxfordshire have a parish council. For instance, your neighbours in Yarnton have a parish council but your “not quite neighbours” in Wolvercote do not.

Budget, roads, flooding

The County Council budget will be agreed on February 11th.  The finances for 25-26 look to be reasonably secure, given the prudent management of the county council and substantial progress on making efficiencies, combined with a sensible council tax increase of 4.99% and a moderately generous grant from government.

This is true despite none of the additional costs of Employer National Insurance Contributions borne by our contractors and suppliers being reimbursed.

Future years may be more difficult, as the government has said it will rebalance funding to support more disadvantaged places, and there are likely to be (unhelpful) changes to business rates and various grant schemes. Oxfordshire is relatively prosperous, despite having pockets of very severe deprivation.

Among other measures, we are restoring annual gulley clearing. The budget of 2021 had reduced this to once every four years. There will be £4m more money for flood measures and nearly £50m for road maintenance.

We are maintaining the investment in children’s services and adult social care, which together take up the bulk of the budget.

There is money to support active travel in rural communities.

We are also suggesting putting a substantial amount aside as a reserve to cover some of the upfront costs of the reorganisation that is coming.

A40

Thank you to everyone who took part in the consultation about the improvements to the A40 from Wolvercote to Eynsham. The data is being collated so it can be part of refinements to the plans.

The area around Cassington is going to be key to the project, and the improvements to the traffic lights on Eynsham Road will make a big difference to how the junction functions – including far shorter waiting times for Cassington people. Plus, additional crossings and bus stops for the village.

The downside of improving the junction is that it will make it quicker for people using Cassington as a through route, so the County Council will work with Cassington PC to ensure that traffic is slowed down and discouraged in the village.

Work will start on Shores Green in February to make the junction four way – the objective is to reduce traffic going through the centre of Witney. It may well have benefits to Cassington, in making it sensible for people to the north-east of Cassington to join the A40 in east Witney rather than going through Cassington or Lower Road.

Buses

You will have seen that Network Rail have now decided that Botley Road railway bridge will remain closed until summer of next year. One of the least well managed projects imaginable. That means that the S1 bus will continue to call at Cassington. Please use it, not least because it will help make the case to Stagecoach to keep a frequent service along the A40.

A reminder also that the frequency of H2s to Summertown and the JR will double from the end of the month, when Pulhams take over the service

New H2 and 67 change from 23rd February 2025 – Pulhams Coaches : Pulhams Coaches

As ever, please contact me at dan.levy@oxfordshire.gov.uk

• District Councillors – Salt Cross planning inspectorate will be held at the end of March issue with making the housing net zero. Local Plan is being developed with all new numbers.
• Parish Councillors – Cllr King attended the Kidlington Airport meeting and advised that the CEO spoke about Botley West and that they and also RAF Brize Norton are looking with the Radar.

Cllr Thompson has brought up about Dix Pit becoming an appointment only site.  Cllr Levy advised that this will come into force in the summer.  He has also advised that there are people fly-tipping along the Burleigh Road.

10. Ditches, Drainage and Flooding

• Balance Pond – BSG Surveys and mitigation plan – Email Kirsty from Blenheim for update
• Email to Cottsway re flooding on Elms Road – No response Tracey to keep emailing.

    11. Maintenance/ Grants

• Village Walls –
• Change waste bin collection – The Clerk has received an email from WODC to advise the Parish Council that if we decided to move away from them for waste collection that they would collect the 3 bins that they installed. The Parish Council have asked Tracey to email back and advise that all the bins are situated in concreate

12.Traffic

• Speed Watch
• Speed Indicators
• Traffic Calming – Cllr Metcalf has a quote from Westcote with regards to the VAS machines that the Parish Council are going to fund. The solar VAS would be £4300 static and £4700 the other company is almost half the price. Westcote post would need to be between 3 – 3.5 metre for battery – other company 2.5 metre for battery and 3.5 metre for solar. It could also be used as part of the talks with OCC.  Cllr Metcalf to do further research.

13. Play Area & Recreation Ground

• Replacement Playground Equipment – Cllr Thompson has advised that we did not get to stage 2 of the lottery

The Parish Council would like to thank the Red Lion for the Burns night raising £1700 for the new playground

14. Finance

Payments to be approved: