Happy New Year to all the residents of Eynsham!
The customary quiet period for the over the Christmas break for the County Council 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 a specific the set-up 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).
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.
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. This 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. We also said that we want to unitarize at pace.
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 750,000 residents: Oxfordshire Data Hub – 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 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 place. The remaining, non-Oxford area would also have insufficient people and be an odd set-up.
Democracy and elections
We have called for County Council elections to go ahead in May, unless the Government can guarantee that a shadow authority can be in place by May 2026 and that elections to that shadow can happen then. Even if elections are postponed at the edict of the Government, we expect a number of by-elections to take place.
This has been misreported as calling for elections to be cancelled. The opposite is true.
The next full set of elections will either be for the unitary or unitaties, or for the County Council under the new boundaries which have come into force.
By-elections will be under the present boundaries. Although it will require a statutory instrument from the Government to make this happen. Apologies for the uncertainty and complexity.
We are expecting further guidance from the Government by the end of January and are working on the assumption that there will be elections in May unless told otherwise.
There is much more detail on the County Council website: Agenda for Cabinet on Thursday, 9 January 2025, 12.00 pm | Oxfordshire County Council
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 Eynsham, are large and well-resourced, and others are not. Not all of the places in Oxfordshire have a parish council.
Budget, roads, flooding
The County Council budget will be agreed on 11 February.
The finances for FY25/26 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 only being reimbursed about 80% of our direct additional costs of employee national insurance (ENIC) and none of the costs of ENIC borne by our contractors and suppliers.
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 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.
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.
As ever, please contact me at dan.levy@oxfordshire.gov.uk