Oxfordshire County Council "School" Report - "Could Do Better" say Lib Dems

Speech by Cllr Zoe Patrick delivered to Cabinet on Tue 20th May 2008

This Annual Report seems to have been put together very hastily and appears very bland and left me wondering who was the target audience?

Is it for our partners or the government, or the general public? The opening sentence starts by saying that 'it is a pretty safe bet that the people of Oxfordshire will remember 2007 for the pulling together during the summer floods' - well, that may be the case but, of course, the expectations of the public has been raised now and we have to be sure that we really can cope if such an emergency were to happen again! It is going to be difficult.

There are however a few points which I would like to focus on today

World class economy Achievements - I was staggered to see how little has been achieved in this list considering 12 million pounds of investment. All the schools listed were either in the north (Banbury) or the west of the County. Witney (again in the west) was the only town with library improvements. Major junction improvements - again only in Banbury. Cycle ways in Oxford - what does that mean - where exactly, and where else? The final sentence saying P&R (Park & Ride I assume this to mean) doesn't make sense as it stands. This seems very poorly put together - just rushed off. The awards given to the Castle development, though applaudable, to be fair, were not given to this Council.

I am pleased to see that the Council is going to word hard to reduce litter and waste - so I hope they will take up the challenge of weed clearance as well.

Public transport could be made a whole lot better if we explored multi-ticketing and I still hope the Council will look at this seriously, despite saying they don't have the technology. If you are pro-active and wish to make progress here this can be done! And it would help reduce our carbon footprint referred to under Climate Change. Greener travel is referred to again, so this would help here as would real time passenger information if it covers more areas than it does currently.

On the flooding and the website - again, although commendable, I heard from many residents who were affected by flooding that accessing the website was something they couldn't do as they saw keyboard and computers floating out of the house in the deluge of water which overwhelmed them!

Bicester Resource Centre - yes, we would like more of these please in other areas of the County - again we see the focus on the north here.

Community led planning - again only Bicester mentioned here - how about other areas like Didcot or Wantage/Grove?

Rural Children's Centre Project - Stanford in the Vale not Standford, and Chinnor not Chinor!! It does help if we can spell our villages properly - again this signifies how rushed this document has been.

Returning Military - yet again, only mention made of Bicester, but there has been a significant amount of troops returning to other places too, notably at Dalton Barracks, Abingdon.

I shall be interested to hear more about the innovative ways of delivering services under the 'value for money' slogan. I hope this isn't dressing up what could become 'service cuts'.

So finally, please can we have some work and achievements in the other areas of Oxfordshire and include other market towns like, Abingdon for instance which seems to have been ignored throughout. It is not even shown on the map as being within the Southern Quadrant. It is a disgraceful omission that the every aspect of life and achievement in Abingdon is omitted. The Town Council and the Vale of White Horse District Council are in the middle of a project commissioned to look at ways forward for Abingdon in the current climate, and the influx of new homes in the town centre residences which brings with it different lifestyles. If the County Council cannot even mention Abingdon once in its Annual Report it does not reflect any commitment to Abingdon and partnership working. I had thought the Leader had wished to take it upon himself to improve the lot of this town - although without sadly having bothered to check what the town and district councils were already doing - but not mentioning it at all does not bode well for the future or partnership working.

This document needs some firm shaping up in my opinion.