Cherwell District Council

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The Last Conservative Administration in Oxfordshire Has Finally Fallen

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The new GaIA group of Greens and Independents

In May the North Oxfordshire Green Party had it’s 5th consecutive win in Oxfordshire gaining a further seat on Cherwell District Council. This gives us 4 members now having grown from the single member we had in 2019 (me).

As I reported last year we were poised to take control in 2023 as part of a 4 way alliance with the Lib Dems, Labour and the Independents. That whole project collapsed at the 11th hour when Labour pulled out of the deal because the didn’t want to work with the Greens. So we had to double our efforts this year to gain additional seats, along with the Lib Dems so that we could finish the job of removing the Conservatives from power across the whole of Oxfordshire. This was something both our parties had promised in 2023 but at that point without Labour’s support we couldn’t deliver on that pledge.

Happily this year we can!

Along with our Lib Dem colleagues we had the numbers this year to take minority control of the council. Sadly we are still 3 seats short of an overall majority, but we felt we needed to deliver on our promises and so have formed an administration. The comprises of two groups – the Lib Dems, who now sit as a single group rather than as part of a group with the Greens and the Independents who have now formed their own separate group which I lead. We joined with the single independent who had previously ben part of the Progressive Oxfordshire Group – the alliance I was a founding member of in 2019.

Our new group is called the Green and Independent Alliance, which neatly forms the acronym ‘GAIA’ which we thought was appropriate for a group of 4 Greens and one Independent, especially as the independent member is a Green in all but name.

Our two groups have now signed a formal coalition agreement to run the council together with 2 Greens, Myself and To Beckett sitting on the executive in Green and Environment roles.

This is a great outcome for us and we hope for the people of Cherwell. We hope to make the district a better place to live and work for everyone as well as improving nature recovery and tackling climate change.

Of course we have since been overtaken by events when on the very day we agreed our new administration Rishi Sunak called a General Election. I must admit that this rather caught us all on the hop just as we were all starting to get to grips with our new leadership roles on the council. This is even more tricky for me since I am the Green Party Parliamentary candidate for the new constituency of Bicester and Woodstock. There will be more on that in my next post.

The new coalition administration of Greens, Lib Dems and Independents after the first full council meeting of the new municipal year

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Greens Bitterly Disappointed as Labour Group Allow Conservatives to Take Control at Cherwell District Council.

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Yesterday evening saw the resumption of the adjourned Cherwell AGM after members failed to reach agreement on a leader and a controlling group last week.

After a second vote where only votes in favour could be counted, Barry Wood was elected to lead a minority Conservative administration after Labour pulled out of an alliance deal that was close to being finalised with the Lib Dems, Greens and Independents. Greens did not vote in favour of either the Conservatives or an unworkable Labour minority administration.

The deal had been all but agreed and a press statement signed off by all parties when, in a surprise announcement last Tuesday, Labour said that their National executive had vetoed the arrangement and wouldn’t allow the alliance to be ratified with a Green member on the executive. As the Greens formed slightly more than 10% of the proposed alliance it was reasonable for them to expect one executive position on a 10 person committee.  It was proposed that they would take the Environment portfolio.

As a result, no agreement could be reached over who would lead the council and the meeting was adjourned to give negotiations one more try. Labour subsequently refused to return to the negotiating table and instead added to their list of demands which further undermined the deal.

Speaking after the meeting Green Group Leader and Deputy Leader of the Progressive Oxfordshire Group Ian Middleton said :

“Greens are bitterly disappointed that we have not been able to fulfil our promise to the electorate and take joint control of the council from the Conservatives. We apologise to residents for that but Labour made it impossible to agree an equitable deal that they would have been a significant part of with 50% of the Executive seats.  We only asked for one seat on a 10 seat executive which was proportionate in view of us making up slightly more that 10% of the total alliance.

Having originally agreed to this arrangement, Labour suddenly pulled the plug citing diktats from their National Executive which local members have capitulated to.  Considering this will also cut Labour out of an alliance as well as joint leadership of the council, this seems incredibly short-sighted.

It seems Labour would rather allow a minority of 20 Conservatives to stay in control of the council than accept one Green on the executive. They also demanded that Labour should be leader, which none of the Progressive Oxfordshire Group were comfortable with considering Cllr Woodcock’s disingenuous statements in the media surrounding the collapse of talks.

We were faced with impossible demands from Labour whose faceless National Executive committee are dictating to local Cherwell residents over who should be in control of their council.  Greens strongly support localism, but it seems Labour would rather allow their central office to force a Conservative administration on to our communities.

Greens have worked hard over the last 5 years, along with the Liberal Democrats and Independents to reduce the Conservative majority to the point where we would have been able to take joint control with Labour.  In that time we have taken 13 Conservative seats whilst Labour have only taken 3. With 3 members, the Greens make up the deciding majority and should rightfully have a seat at the table.

It’s quite clear that Labour have betrayed the people of Cherwell by focusing on their own political interests rather than those of the electorate. From now on, every terrible decision and policy that the Conservatives push through can be laid at the feet of Labour. Every appalling injustice imposed on our community as a result of Conservative control can be traced back to this moment.  

Greens will now be part of a strong opposition on CDC rather than in an unstable alliance with Labour. We will continue work along with our Liberal Democrat and Independent colleagues in the spirit of co-operation that Labour have rejected and hold the Conservatives to account as part of a strengthened official opposition.

We are confident that together we can win enough additional seats next year to take control without Labour’s help and will do so at the first opportunity. The door is still open for Labour to come to their senses and agree a fair deal with us to take control of the council at any point during the year.  In the meantime the Conservatives plans, including further green belt erosion as part of their local plan and a lack of genuine affordable housing will be resisted to the best of our ability. We hope Labour will at least join us in supporting that endeavour”

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Political Posturing on Potholes is Full of Holes

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OK, I’ll agree, the state of our roads in Oxfordshire is shocking.

As I journey around the district on my bike and by car I can see the number of cracks, holes and ravines as much as any other other road user and the situation is unacceptable.

But our roads didn’t get into this state in just the last 2 years!

The Conservatives have been grandstanding in this election about potholes and blaming the Lib Dem/Labour/Green coalition on the County Council for the situation. But it’s no worse now than it was under the last Conservative controlled administration. In fact it’s probably a bit better in terms of how responsive our road management team are.

I appreciate that seeing so many potholes is frustrating. I’m reporting them every day and they have become more numerous recently after the changeable weather. Crews are out every day fixing them but it’s a battle to try to get the worst ones prioritised and everyone understandably wants to see those in their area fixed first. But the problem with repairing them is not lack of willingness by the council, it’s lack of money/resources.

Not a new problem

During the last year of the Tory run administration on OCC a story was run in the Oxford Mail which reported that an insurance company had ranked Oxfordshire fifth worst for the number of potholes reported between 2015 and 2018. Figures showed 93,112 potholes were reported during that period amounting to 19.6 potholes per km of road.

Read the full story here

The figures, from The Insurance Emporium, showed other areas worse than Oxfordshire include East Riding of Yorkshire, Northamptonshire, Edinburgh and in top spot Devon as the worst for potholes. From personal experience I’d add our sister county Buckinghamshire to that list having driven though there recently, their roads make ours look like billiard tables!


But the current state of the roads is something that has been building up for years due to lack of investment by successive governments. I’m not even going to blame the Conservatives for it (as they are trying to do to us now) except to say that, as a Conservative administration themselves, they could probably have leant on the government a bit more to stump up some extra cash for repairs instead of borrowing their way out of the problem and saddling us with yet more debt that taxpayers will carry for years. Even then they still didn’t sort the problem out, because quite frankly it’s not sortable without massive investment.

Oxfordshire’s highways need about £45m a year just to stop them getting any worse. The council get less than a third of that from government and another third from local taxation. Some of the remaining third is covered by borrowing that was taken out by the previous administration that will run out in 2025 (although we’ll be paying millions in interest for many years to come). No one really knows where the funding will come from to cover that when that happens. A good chunk of that funding also goes on bridge repairs, and as many of you will have noticed, our bridges are also falling apart as well and if we have a catastrophic bridge failure the result could be a lot more serious than a puncture!

Our existing roads, are essentially worn out due to lack of proper maintenance for decades. The main cause of this is lack of central government funding made worse by the austerity measures during the last 10 years. It would now cost billions across the county to bring them all up to a decent standard and that doesn’t include pathways.

In the meantime the government forces local authorities to build more roads through “growth schemes” tied to essential housing that they won’t provide enough funding to maintain in the future. So the deficit continues to widen.

Playing politics

Lets stop playing politics over potholes. Every party blames the other for the state of the roads , but ultimately it’s a matter of investment. We all hate potholes and we all know they shouldn’t be there, but it’s daft to suggest that not fixing them is a deliberate choice for any controlling administration. If we had the spare money, don’t you think we’d spend it just to get the problem off our desks? And before people jump on the usual “if you didn’t spend it on this or that, you could fix X number of potholes” remember that government is all about making those decisions. A few £100K here or there is never going to fix the problems we have with road maintenance now we need billions if we’re going to sort this mess out.

As an administration we are absolutely focussed on doing the best with what we have on pothole repairs. The response time on repairs is now much better, but I accept there’s still room for improvement, particularly in terms of the longevity of some of the repairs. But we are going to need serious cash if we’re going to meet residents’ expectations and any politician who tells you otherwise is just using this issue as a campaigning tool. The only ways to get those funds is an increase in council tax, a reduction in other vital services or a very significant injection of funding from the government – and I don’t mean the paltry £3m or so that they recently announced for Oxfordshire coincidentally just before the local elections!

So if you really want to see a longer term systemic improvement you need to lobby the government to properly support local authorities. While you’re at it, you could mention a similar situation with health and social care, especially as they’ve just cut promised funding for carers in half!