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Leader’s Report – 7 October 2021

Following positive talks at last week’s cabinet meeting, we now have a tree planting strategy for district council owned land, a Procurement Strategy and now that that the strategic property review has come to fruition we have a sensible way forward mapped out for selling, buying, maintaining and generally making better use of our property assets.

Accessing meetings

As a pre-emptive measure, I wish to apologies to all for any failings which may occur with our IT systems for in person meetings. I have asked officers to see if they can come up with a more reliable system for participating in and recording the publicly accessible sections of our meetings. This is not an easy problem to resolve when our systems are controlled by an outside company and we need the ability to move equipment around so I wish them well with this. I do also wish that the government would see fit to bring forward legislation so that individual councils could decide where and when they can meet, online or in person or a hybrid.

Briefings

Last month we had all member briefings on Strategic Sites – Masterplanning & Delivery, an update on the Future Oxfordshire Partnership (formerly known as the Growth Board), and some education on the Oxfordshire Clinical Commissioning Group. Some of us also had a tour of facilities at Culham Science Centre.

Consultations closing soon

There are two consultations closing soon that I wanted to bring to your attention:

  • The Oxfordshire 2050 plan regulation 18 consultation runs until 8 October so be quick if you wish to comment
  • The Oxford-Cambidge Arc Spatial Framework Vision consultation runs until 11:45pm on 12 October

Working together to tackle climate emergency

I have now chaired the first two meetings of the Environment group of the Future Oxfordshire Partnership. There is strong support for partnership working across the county. In these times of severe financial constraint it is far more efficient for us to share officer input on things like communication, work on retrofitting, lobbying on building to zero carbon standards or better and the many other facets of climate change we need to address.

Stepping down

I have been pleased and honoured to lead this council for the last two-and-a-half years. It has felt like a real rollercoaster ride with the Local Plan and Covid along the way. But now we have a good Corporate Plan and monitoring system in place and have done a lot of preparatory work so we look forward to a period of delivery. So I think it is now time to hand over to someone with a fresh pair of eyes to lead us.

I still wish to work within our valued partnership with the Green Party so I hope to be in the next cabinet. I shall also retain my strong interest in climate change and nature recovery.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank many people for their support while I have been leader.

My fellow councillors – I have tried hard to be as inclusive as possible so that all members have access to briefings on a wide range of topics and have had the opportunity to have input into areas that interest them (I might mention in passing how well this seems to be working in the Climate Change and Ecological Emergency Advisory Committee CEEAC whose meetings are a pleasure to attend as we work cooperatively).

Particular thanks should go to my very supportive cabinet for all their hard work.

Obviously I want to thank Mark [Stone] and all our officers for their help, advice and good work.

Although they may not be able to hear this, I’d like to thank leaders of other councils and other bodies – health, business related etc, – especially in Oxfordshire but also more widely. I have learned a lot from them and I hope my successor will enjoy working on this wider stage as much as I have.

And it should be taken as read that I have been extraordinarily reliant on my very supportive husband of 50 years and my long-suffering family to whom I wish to devote a little more time!

An able successor

So I shall have great pleasure in nominating Cllr David Rouane as my successor as leader.

David has recently been unanimously elected as leader of the Liberal Democrat group, the largest group on this council with just over a third of its members. I strongly believe that David will make an excellent leader of this council.

He has a mathematical background for clear analysis and weighing up what needs to be done, an accounting background that is very useful in budgeting, and am appealing sense of humour. I commend Cllr Rouane to you.