The Licensing Authority at Oxford City Council are consulting on the current vehicle emissions standards for licensed Hackney Carriage Vehicles. The current emissions standards stipulates that all licensed Hackney Carriage Vehicles must meet the Ultra Low Emissions Vehicle (ULEV) standard by 2025.
Closed 27 November 2023
An application has been made by the City of Oxford Licensed Taxi Association (COLTA) to vary the Hackney Carriage Table of Fares for Oxford City. The last variation (increase) to the table of fares for Hackney Carriage Vehicles in Oxford City was made in May 2021. The proposed variation can be compared across the existing table of far es and the proposed table of...
Closed 22 November 2023
The splash feature at Hinksey Park has come to the end of its life and has had to close. The costs to build a new one are likely to be significant and will be challenging in the current financial climate. However, we are looking at how we might be able to try to do this which includes exploring external funding opportunities and different delivery options. One of these options is...
Closed 10 November 2023
Welcome to the communications survey. Oxford City Council is carrying out a significant amount of work at the moment, and we think it’s important that we keep Oxford residents informed. The purpose of this survey is to improve the way we communicate with residents. The survey will ask you where you get your news from, where you’d like to get it from, and what you’d like to know more about....
Closed 31 October 2023
Oxford City Council are consulting on whether to vary, extend or remove a Public Spaces Protection Order in the city regarding the control of dogs. No restrictions apply to assistance dogs or where a person has a reasonable excuse. The current Dog Control PSPO makes it an offence: for a person to allow their dog to be in a children’s play park to be in control of...
Closed 13 October 2023
See what we've consulted on. See all outcomes
Firstly, we asked questions about our local council tax reduction scheme design for next year.
We asked how much we should increase the income bands, in line with the large increases in inflation last year. Each income band determines how much support a household can claim towards their council tax charge.
We asked if adult residents within the household should be expected to help pay the council tax charge.
We asked if letters should be moved online, rather than posted out
We also asked if the law had changed and it impacted on a council tax charge whether we should be allowed to backdate an application for council tax reduction by more than a month, which is the current maximum backdate.
Secondly, for existing Council Tax Reduction and Housing Benefit customers we asked some customer satisfaction questions:
A majority of respondents, 79%, agreed or strongly agreed with using income bands to decide how much support people should get towards paying their council tax.
A majority of respondents, 72% agreed or strongly agreed that the income bands should be increased by 10.1%, the rate of inflation.
Around half, 56% of respondents agreed or strongly agreed with increasing the bands by a lower amount of 5%. Around a third, 29% disagreed and the rest were not sure.
A majority of 60% of respondents agreed that adult household members should contribute towards paying the council tax charge. Just under a third of respondents disagreed, 27%, and the rest were unsure.
There was a much more even spilt when we asked if we should move letters regarding council tax reduction online, rather than send by post 46% agreed, 43% disagreed.
A clear majority, 76% were in favour of us allowing more than a month to backdate an application where a law has changed putting a council tax charge back further than one month.
For those customers who are receiving Housing Benefit or Council Tax reduction the results were.
The most popular answer for how long you think a reasonable time to process a new application for Benefit was 1-2 weeks at 34%, with the second most popular being within a month at 30%.
The most popular answer of how long you think is reasonable to process a change in your circumstances was 1-2 weeks at 38%. Within a month received 23% of votes and within one week 22%.
The contact methods were ranked as follows in terms of most popular to least popular:
In terms of online services a clear majority do have access to online services at 93%, but a third of respondents prefer to use a different contact method.
A majority, 79% of respondents reported that they could understand the letter that was sent to them, although we did receive a lot of feedback in the comments on improvements to the letters that we are taking on board.
Overall, a majority of people reported positive customer satisfaction, but again we are working through all the comments received.
We have shared your feedback on our council tax reduction scheme proposals with senior managers and our local councillors who will look at the design for next year’s council tax reduction scheme. Your feedback will help to shape this scheme.
We are using the feedback on how quickly you think is reasonable to process a new application and change of circumstances to set our targets. We will work towards these and if we are not meeting them put plans in place to improve.
Your contact preferences will be taken into account when we look at which services are available, opening hours and staffing levels for these services. We will also use it to consider any future changes to these.
Feedback on how you use our online services is useful when we make decisions whether to move more of our contact online. We can see how many customers will need to have an alternative contact method available.
Thank you for your feedback on our letters. We are going to review the letters that we send out to make sure that they are easy to read and to understand the complex information that we need to provide.
Thank you for providing feedback on your overall satisfaction. We report within the council on this. We will listen to all the feedback provided, comments on the service and suggestions made to see where we can improve. Thank you also to those who gave positive feedback on the service that we are providing.
We asked for views on the outline design plans for the new burial meadow from 3rd – 23rd July 2023 to gain a better understanding of the views of stakeholders, future users, and members of the public to ensure the strongest design and project solutions are developed.
The ‘country park’ style scheme design of the new greenspace and burial meadow provides the public service of new burial space for Oxford within a strong landscape framework appropriate to the character of the site. The scheme includes improvements to tree cover, boundary hedges, and will improve the biodiversity of the site and enhance the public access.
The consultation included the following elements to ensure it was well publicised, and that a range of key groups were notified, and had the opportunity to submit comments.
A high number of people provided feedback on the outline design of the burial meadow. Most people fed back through the online survey - 439 in total, with 11 people attending the Horspath Village drop in event, and 4 people attending the Town Hall drop in event.
91% of respondents were in favour of the new greenspace and burial meadow.
While 90% of respondents said their purpose of visiting the site would be for a burial event, 43% said they would use the site for a walk / contemplation, and 28% said they would access wider countryside walks or Shotover Woods from their visit to the site.
In terms of means of transport to the site: 64% of respondents would use a car; 31% would consider using a bike; 20% the bus; 7% a taxi, and 5% a scooter.
Ideas for improvement included the following: hand washing point; timber shelter for use in heavy rain and that can function as gathering space for prayer; access near grave plots; boot brush point; more cycle parking; room for green burials; water point for people to use.
The information from the consultation was taken on board by the design team and used to help shape the next design phase. A planning application has now been submitted and there is another consultation stage as part of the planning process.
We carried out a follow up to the Preferred Options consultation dedicated specifically to the question of housing need, as the necessary evidence was not immediately available for the first round. We had commissioned studies to collect evidence on the level of housing need in Oxford, and we invited public comments on the findings of the studies and the methods that were used.
We have prepared a summary of all the comments received and produced a report which is available to view here on our webpages.
We have produced a draft Local Plan for submission to the Government for examination. This draft plan containing policies that have been informed by the feedback from the Preferred Options Consultations, including policies relating to housing provision and site allocations.
It is possible to comment on the housing and site allocation policies in the ongoing Local Plan Regulation 19 Consultation, after which the plan will be formally submitted.