Roads
Maintenance
As mentioned last month, a large amount of money has been made available by the County Council for road maintenance. You will start to see roads being fixed now that the weather is improving. Potholes can’t be fixed when it is wet. Ideally you won’t notice that it is happening – people notice the holes but not fixed roads!
A £7.4m project for surface dressing of roads (i.e. fixing the whole surface rather than just the holes) is also underway.
A40
The work on the Shores Green junction in Witney has commenced. The changes will make the eastern Witney junction work in each direction and will also improve cycling access to Witney. I was there earlier in the week and briefed on how the work is going. You probably won’t be surprised to hear that the council’s contractors found a Thames Water main that Thames Water didn’t have on their maps!
You might have noticed that the traffic lights under the bridge on the way into Witney have already been removed. The team is trying to ensure that there is the minimum disruption during the work.
Local government reorganisation latest
The initial response from the Oxfordshire authorities will go to the Ministry for Communities, Housing and Local Government (MCHLG) government department next week. There will be three options, of differing merits.
1. A whole Oxfordshire Unitary authority
2. Two Unitaries - i) Vale of White Horse/South Oxfordshire,/West Berkshire and ii) West Oxfordshire District Council/Cherwell/City of Oxford
3. Three Unitaries: i) an enlarged Oxford City (including Eynsham), rump of South and Vale and West Berks iii) rump of WODC and Cherwell.
Option 1 will cause the least disruption to key services and deliver the least financial shock, as well as meeting the criteria set out by Government, e.g. to have new unitaries of at least 500,000 residents. That doesn’t mean the Government will support it.
West Berkshire has yet to confirm that they want to be part of options 2 and 3.
We need to make sure that whatever MCHLG decides, there is a role for parish councils embedded in the new arrangements and that decisions are taken at the most local level where they can be.
Elections
A reminder that there are elections for the County Council on 1 May, under the new boundaries set out by the Electoral Commission. I will be standing again in Eynsham Division, which covers Cassington, South Leigh, Northmoor, Stanton Harcourt, and of course Eynsham.
There will also be a District Council by-election in the Standlake, Aston and Stanton Harcourt ward, following the resignation of the new MP for Witney, Charlie Maynard.
As ever, I can be contacted on dan.levy@oxfordshire.gov.uk