Leader’s report

Published Friday 12 December 2025

As you can imagine, being a council leader takes up pretty much all of your time and all of your attention, and so I had promised my family that I would step down this year. However, there were certain things which could not easily be handed over midstream. The first of these was the Joint Local Plan and the second was Local Government Reorganisation.

Joint Local Plan

On our Joint Local Plan, there was welcome news in correspondence at the end of November from the Inspectors examining our plan. The Planning Minister issued a ministerial statement confirming that the Government intends to remove the duty to co-operate as a requirement in the planning system through new planning regulations to be laid early in the new year. The Minister then wrote to the Planning Inspectorate inviting Inspectors of plans currently at examination (like our Joint Local Plan) to begin any necessary dialogue with councils in advance of the Regulations coming into effect. On 28 November the Joint Local Plan Inspectors wrote to our Councils seeking our views on the implications and in particular how we wish to proceed. The Councils have replied, welcoming the Inspectors’ letter and setting out that our wish is to ask them to resume the hearings and progress the Joint Local Plan through examination and, all being well, to adoption.

We are awaiting next steps and will publish our letter once the Inspectors confirm we can put it on the Joint Local Plan examination webpage.

Local Government Reorganisation

When the government announced at the end of last year that we would have to convert to a unitary authority, we saw that a countywide authority would not address our council’s policy which is to create a council small enough to be responsive to the needs of our residents, and so we set about putting together the Two Unitary proposal and the creation of a Ridgeway Council. Key to the success of this was the relationships which I had developed with the officers drafting the proposal and the leaders of the other councils, especially Bethia (from Vale) and Jeff (West Berks), and so I agreed to stay on until the proposal was submitted to the government, which it was at the end of November. I now feel able to hand over the reins in time for the next stage.

Obituary

I am stepping down as leader having held the position for four years, and having served as the cabinet member for Housing & Environment before that. Although most people have been warm about my decision, I note from the Oxford Mail that one of our more rancorous members has said that my departure has come at a “challenging time for the council which has struggled on several fronts”. I will try to try to comfort him by showing how we have been dealing with these challenges.

The first challenge which we faced was the dire financial state which we and our Green Party partners inherited from the previous council, and which we have transformed so that my successor will be able to present a balanced budget early next year without resorting to any cut backs. We have been able to do this by undertaking a process of transformation which has included reversing an ill conceived  outsourcing of services and important back office functions and by moving out of a ludicrously expensive rented office.

When I was elected, my main priority was to do something about homelessness and the lack of genuinely affordable housing, overturning the assumption in previous Local Plans that ‘the market will provide’. My first act as a cabinet member was to introduce the Housing First principles to the district, a system of housing and wraparound care which helps homeless people move into safe and secure long term housing. As leader I have overseen the return of ‘council houses’ with the council becoming a Registered Provider of social housing for the first time since the housing stock was sold off in 1997.

Having resigned my job as director of a climate campaign group in order to take on this role, you can imagine that I would want to act on the challenge which the whole world is facing, the climate and ecological emergency. We are implementing a climate action plan which includes decarbonising our buildings, introducing EV charging points in our car parks, and trialling our own use of electronic vehicles where this is practicable. Our recycling is rated as the top district in England and we are ranked as a high-performing authority in the 2025 Climate Emergency UK Scorecards.

On biodiversity, we have transformed the way in which we manage our own land to prioritise nature and we have funded many local nature recovery projects in parishes across the district. I have been fortunate to represent the councils on the board of the Oxfordshire Local Nature Partnership which has just launched its Nature Recovery Strategy.

Finally, all public bodies should be judged by how they treat those most disadvantaged in our community. By its very nature, much of this work takes place quietly and out of sight. The work of our Community Hub catching those who have fallen through the gaps in government support, the work of the Community Safety Partnership on anti-social behaviour and domestic violence, and that of the Garden Town Team promoting the Healthy Didcot programme tackling childhood obesity.

You only need to switch on the television to see that these are challenging times for everyone, but this council is not struggling, it is rising to those challenges and I am confident that it will continue to do so under its new leader.