Didcot Garden Town – updates

Latest news:

Didcot Garden Town Advisory Board

The next Didcot Garden Town Advisory Board meeting was on 20 October. The agenda pack for the 20 October Advisory Board meeting can be found here (PDF) and the Didcot Garden Town programme – SMART Dashboard here. During the last meeting in July we went through the garden town projects with our members and you can see the July meeting notes here (PDF).

Newsletter

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 Autumn 2025 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:

Healthy Didcot

Members of the Steering Group, and interested parties, have been working collaboratively to provide information on projects they have been working on and the programmes they will be doing or would like to do in the future. This data and the recommendations have been fed into an Action Plan to help identify partners and organisations that can work together to address the identified health inequalities for some residents. 

The Action Plan is a live document that is evolving under the leadership of the multi-agency steering group. 

Thank you to all our Didcot community partners who have co -produced the Healthy Didcot Action Plan with us, creating a resource and platform to recognise, grow and support all the incredible health focused work being delivered in Didcot presently and in the future. Key priorities in the Action Plan include communication and development, wellbeing, health and built and maintained environments, using the Didcot Community Health Insight recommendations to focus the work.   

Healthy Didcot Reports

Healthy Didcot Action Plan

Community Insight Report

Stakeholder engagement Report

Resident Survey

Routes: Cow Lane Connecting Communities Art Project

We were delighted to receive 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 Pixel Puppets artists Helen Brook and Ben Carlin who are creating a lighting intervention using colour and pattern to reanimate Cow Lane underpass.   
 
The Cow Lane Connecting Communities Project will transform the underpass to make it a safer, more welcoming and visually appealing route connecting the town centre and green spaces to the north of Didcot and the railway station. 

Discover more about this project at our exhibition at Cornerstone Arts Centre in Didcot. Come along and share your thoughts and contribute to the creative process by completing a postcard with your vision of Didcot – the exhibition will be available to view until 5 January 2026. The online engagement page can be found here for further information.

Didcot Public Art Plan

We are delighted to share our Public Art plan for Didcot. The plan focusses on sustainability and nature, connecting residents to their surroundings and celebrating visual responses to our landscapes – something that everyone can get involved in.

The plan will focus on leading by example, the evolving identity of Didcot and inviting people to share their stories and celebrate different cultures. With connectivity, movement, innovation, science, technology, and transformation as our commissioning approaches, we will share more news on how you can get involved as they develop.

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. This year we hope to install new information boards, signage posts, community information boards and way-markers along paths and roads in Didcot. The wayfinding scheme is has been based on the Wayfinding Strategy, which was approved by the councils’ Cabinet last year.

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.

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.

Other projects:

Didcot Nature Trail

Our Local Cycling and Walking Infrastructure Plan (otherwise known as an LCWIP) for Didcot has now been approved by Oxfordshire County Council as the local highways authority. The plan sets out where improvements can be made to cycling paths and walkways to help encourage everyone to get around the town. You can read the report below and if you’d like a copy of any appendices, please contact us and we’ll send over a copy.

Leisure Facilities Assessment and Strategy and the Playing Pitch Strategy 

The councils have approved and adopted these two strategies earlier this year to audit what facilities are available, including the type and quality of local playing fields in the South and Vale districts. We have extracted the data for the Didcot Garden Town area to help understand what is available in Didcot as a whole.  

• You can read the Leisure Facilities Assessment Strategy for Didcot here.
• You can read the Playing Pitch Strategy for Didcot here.
• You can also access some maps that we’ve created to display the locations of all the sports facilities and pitches in the garden town area. 

The full district wide strategies are detailed below: 

Leisure Facilities Assessment and Strategy  

The councils have approved a new Leisure Facilities Assessment Strategy (LFAS), which provides an audit of the quality, quantity and accessibility of leisure facilities, as well as the current and future use of the facilities. The LFAS has assessed the key sports and leisure facilities within the South Oxfordshire and Vale of White Horse district areas, including throughout Didcot. This includes sports halls, swimming pools, activity halls, health and fitness suites, squash courts, water sports facilities, skateparks, multi-use games areas and climbing walls.

The Playing Pitch Strategy

The councils have also adopted a new The Playing Pitch Strategy, which provides an audit of the quality, quantity, and accessibility of playing pitches (including cricket, football, hockey, rugby and other pitches) to establish the current levels of demand and the appropriate level of pitch provision that can be planned for the future.

You can find out more information on both the above strategies here.

Didcot Garden Town case study

Didcot Wildlife Garden Charter

We’ve partnered with Sustainable Didcot to help highlight a Didcot Wildlife Garden Charter to encourage everyone to pledge to help the wildlife thrive in their own garden.

With just a few simple steps you can help create green corridors to help enhance the biodiversity in the local area. You can get involved by visiting Sustainable Didcot’s website.

More information on the garden town

Find out more about the Didcot Garden Town and the delivery plan here.