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Leader’s Statement – Report to the council – 19 May 2022

Cllr David Rouane, Leader of South Oxfordshire District Council, delivered the Leader’s report to Council at the meeting on 19 May 2022:

Covid has not gone away and we are still operating our Community Hub for those in need. However, with the Covid emergency rapidly being overtaken by a cost of living emergency, the work of the Hub is re-focussing towards supporting those affected by this.

As with Covid, we will be working with voluntary groups such as Citizens’ Advice, food banks and other community support as well as providing direct help ourselves.

We have appointed a new community liaison officer who is working with Asylum Welcome to help residents and community groups support Ukrainian guests who are settling in households across our district. This is not a one-off piece of work but likely to be an ongoing function of the council, particularly through our Housing and Community Support teams, for some time.

Members will recall that we included in the budget a provision of £500k to accelerate projects within our Corporate Plan which had been delayed by Covid. This has now been  allocated and includes:

  • Expanding the capacity of our climate and ecology team with new officers working on implementing our retrofit report, working with communities on tree planting, a specific project to apply bathing water status for Wallingford Beach, and a communications officer to run campaigns on behavioural change.
  • In June we will launch a light touch grant scheme allowing community groups to apply for up to £1,000 to support activities that increase or sustain involvement in physical activities We want to ensure that we can make payments in time to help and support activities that will occur through the summer months.
  • We are also putting additional staff and resources into deep cleaning of our towns and villages, including our public toilets.

Finally, I would like to congratulate Suzanne Malcolm who has been appointed as the District Council Network representative on group chaired by a government minister to look at how to deliver ‘net-zero’ at a sub-national level.