Budget
The County Council budget was passed on 10 February. The Government has taken at least £24m from grants to Oxfordshire and obliged the County Council to increase Council Tax by 4.99% per annum for the next three years, meaning that there will need to be substantial reductions in some areas of spending.
Currently, 70% of the County Council’s revenue spend is on adults’ and children’s social care. We passed a balanced budget, with additional sums going into social care and into road maintenance, particularly into gulley clearance, where £3.2m will be spent next year.
Road maintenance
The record amount of money being invested in roads is partly from UK Government, but very much topped up by the County Council. Rather disgracefully, the Government boasts it is giving £168m, without mentioning that the amount is over four years (£35m for the year coming up) back-loaded and not guaranteed. At today’s prices, it costs about £50m per annum to keep the roads from getting worse.
The wet and cold weather has led to peak pothole season, across the country. The County Council is working hard to fix the issues, with individual holes being filled and wider areas of patching. As ever, people notice the holes and not the areas that don’t have them. But the roads from Eynsham to Botley has been fully patched, as has Lower Road, and the worst of the A40 holes (including the one by the Tesco) were fixed on the night of 19 February. Some of these patches will fail – it is impossible to do a permanent job in the rain.
Buses
A reminder that free bus travel (when you pay for parking) from all the Oxford Park and Ride stations continues, and that an all-Oxfordshire, all-bus company ticket – MyBusOxfordshire – remains priced at £6.50 for an adult day ticket.
The new X52 timetable has been published. This bus will replace the S2 on the Oxford to Cheltenham route in March, and be run by Pulhams, who provided significantly better pricing than Stagecoach. It is a pretty similar schedule to the current one.