Didcot Garden Town – updates

Latest news:

Healthy Didcot UKSPF Funding report

Through UKSPF funding, Healthy Didcot has supported thousands of local residents, helping over 10,000 people take part in activities across the town. The programme has also supported 29 groups and projects and enabled nine partner organisations to deliver local initiatives. View the Healthy Didcot UKSPF Report to learn more about the programme’s impact and achievements. The PDF version of the report is also available to view here. Find out more about the UK Shared Prosperity Fund and Rural England Prosperity Fund projects in our districts through the Economic Development webpages.

Find out about our Wellbeing and Employment Fair that we’re hosting in collaboration with DWP and the Be Together programme on the Be Together Events webpage.

Didcot Garden Town Advisory Board

The last Didcot Garden Town Advisory Board meeting was on 19 October. During the meeting, we went through the garden town projects with our members. You can see the latest information on the Didcot Garden Town programme – SMART Dashboard here (PDF). The previous July Meeting notes can be viewed here.

July 2026 – Latest news on Great Western Park GP Surgery

NHS Thames Valley has published an update on their aims to deliver a new GP surgery in Didcot. Find out the latest news on their website under ‘Improving our estates’ and ‘Great Western Park Didcot’ page.

We produce a newsletter to keep you up to date on what’s happening in and around the garden town. Click here for our latest Summer 2026 newsletter.

If you’d like to sign up and receive our newsletters to find out more about the exciting projects planned for the town – register for updates by pressing the button below:

Project updates:

Wayfinding

We’ve been working on providing new signage around the town to help new and existing residents to find the wide and varied walkways and cycle paths in Didcot. In September of this year (2026) we started the installation new information boards, signage posts, community information boards and way-markers along paths and roads in Didcot. After a few issues were identified with a small number of signs, the installation has been paused while we work with contractors to review all 49 signs that are part of this project. We’re now working on new installation dates and hope the work will resume as soon as possible.

The map below shows where the signage will go:

Download our Wayfinding Strategy

The wayfinding scheme is based on the Wayfinding Strategy, which was approved by the councils’ Cabinet in 2024

Wayfinding toolkit – our contractors have put together a toolkit to help developers and others to introduce their own wayfinding scheme using the same designs and principles that we’ve used in Didcot. Here’s a link to the wayfinding toolkit for all the signage.

Routes: Cow Lane Connecting Communities Art Project

We received funding from Great Western Railway’s Community Investment Fund and further funding from UK Shared Prosperity Fund to progress the Cow Lane art project from our Didcot Public Art Plan.

The project comprises of two strands. Strand one, working with artist Raphael Daden is an outdoor gallery leading between Cow Lane and Didcot Parkway. Strand two, working with Second Nature Stuido (formerly Pixel Puppets) artists Helen Brook and Ben Carlin who are creating a lighting intervention using colour and pattern to reanimate Cow Lane underpass.

In June (2026) essential cleaning, maintenance and repair work took place at the Cow Lane underpass. The site was cleared of rubbish, overgrown trees and shrubs, weeded and new lighting was installed by Oxfordshire County Council.

The installation of the art work along the underpass as part of this project was paused. We continue to negotiate on the licence for the work with Network Rail, who own and manage the bridge.

You can find out more about the first stage of this project at Didcot Parkway Station (which took place in February 2026) in our press release.

Green Infrastructure

Our Green Infrastructure Strategy is helping us to create detailed designs on how we can improve the biodiversity along walkways and cycle paths in and around Didcot and help to develop a better routes between Mowbray Fields to Great Western Park.

Download our Green Infrastructure Strategy