Dear all,
I realise that this attachment is lengthy but, I feel that circulation is important. I know that much information is coming down to you but, may be too much is better than a little? The attachment has been sent by Oxfordshire County Council’s CEO Yvonne Rees and has been sent to all OCC’s Councillors. It provides information from our critical health partners and has been circulated to key stakeholders. Please make time to read it. With best wishes, Judy At the end of the first day of reopening, Oxfordshire County Council Cabinet Member Cllr Yvonne Constance wanted to thank all those who visited for playing their part.
The sites at Alkerton, Ardley, Dix Pit, Drayton, Oakley Wood, Redbridge and Stanford in the Vale have been extremely busy since they opened at 8.00am this morning but Cllr Constance said it was encouraging that residents had understood the importance of the social distancing measures the Council had introduced. "We were committed to get these seven sites open and we knew today would be very busy with people bringing in their essential waste. As expected, traffic queues have built up but our residents have played their part by being considerate and adhering to the revised site layouts. "We know things at the recycling sites will be busy for the foreseeable future, so I hope people will continue to be patient. My main plea to residents is to consider whether they can wait a few days or longer before visiting their nearest site. The more we can stagger waste coming in, the less traffic will queue and the easier it will be for everyone." The council asks residents to remember:
Specific rules and restrictions will vary by site. Please refer to the county council website before leaving home to familiarise yourself with these and to avoid frustration and delay: www.oxfordshire.gov.uk/wastereopenquestions URL : http://news.oxfordshire.gov.uk/council-offers-big-thank-you-to-oxfordshire-residents-as-recycling-sites-reopen/ Great Coxwell Parish Council has discussed the advice and recommendations issued by the Government, councils and relevant bodies on social distancing and access to parks and green spaces.
The play equipment on our "Doorstep Green" is not separated from the general village green area. When the initial social distancing guidance was issued, the Parish Council posted signs asking people not to use the equipment. Unfortunately, these signs were ignored and thus the Council decided to close the area in order to ensure that access to their facilities did not compromise social distancing guidelines from the Government. Given this situation and with consideration of the extended period during which we as a Council have not been able to perform our usual weekly safety checks and litter picks of the area (due to Councillors' own need to be shielding themselves), we have decided that the whole of Great Coxwell park will remain closed during this period of social distancing. We hope that this does not compromise your ability to exercise locally and intend to reopen the park again just as soon as it is safe and reasonable to do so. Great Coxwell Parish Council 18/05/2020 Dear Everyone, please find attached a briefing that has been circulated to all Oxfordshire County Councillors from our CEO Yvonne Rees. It is a very detailed and lengthy document but has some exceedingly interesting and valuable information which I wish to share with you all. Do come back to me if you have any queries. This will also be circulated to all of our key stakeholders.
With best wishes, Judy As you are aware Oxfordshire’s seven Household Waste Recycling Centres (HWRCs) have been shut to waste delivered by the public since 24 March 2020, following Government’s direction that everyone should stay home due to the Coronavirus pandemic.
Since then we have been working with the city and district councils to ensure excellent kerbside collection services have continued, and preparing for full service reopening of the recycling centres. The sites will reopen on Monday 18th May at 8:00am. All seven sites will be open seven days a week as long as they are not overwhelmed and can operate safely, and will accept all waste materials. Sites will open at 8am and close at 4pm to allow for additional cleaning. The number of vehicles allowed onto the site will be reduced by approximately 50% to allow for social distancing. This means that queues are highly likely, especially at peak times such as weekends. Traffic marshals will be in place to manage queues, but queuing is not allowed on the public highway. Residents are therefore being urged only to visit the site if their trip is essential and they cannot safely store their waste at home Other policy changes in place include:
We will begin our communications to residents at the beginning of next week. A full list of FAQs will be available on our website shortly. When communicating this good news with your residents, please emphasise that Government guidance says that trips to an HWRC should only be made if ‘essential’ – that is if the waste cannot be stored safely without harm to health. The Government guidance states: “It would be reasonable for residents to undertake a journey to a HWRC if the waste or recycling could not be stored safely at home or disposed of through other legitimate routes such as a dedicated collection. By this we mean that the waste/recycling could not be stored on their property without causing a risk of injury, health or harm to the resident or other members of their household or harm to public health and amenity.” If you have any questions please contact the waste management team Judy Judith Heathcoat Deputy Leader to the Council, Cabinet Member for Community Safety Oxfordshire County Council Cllr. Faringdon Division (Buckland with Gainfield, Littleworth, Faringdon, Eaton Hastings, Buscot, Coleshill, Gt Coxwell, Lt Coxwell) Extra garden waste collections
Please help us to spread the message to residents that we are collecting extra garden waste collections for customers of our brown bin service. Here’s the message we’re sharing with residents: If you’re a garden waste customer, this weekend’s the perfect time to get your lawn, flower gardens and vegetable patches in tip top condition as we’ll be collecting one extra bin load of garden waste after the bank holiday. A bin’s worth of waste is considered around three large bin bags, and should be left next to your brown bin on your usual collection day during: week commencing 11 May – Vale Friday waste changes If your waste collection is usually on a Friday, then this week it will change to Saturday to give our crews the bank holiday off. Collections will be on Saturday 9 May and from 6am so we recommend putting bins out the night before. To find out more head to our website visit whitehorsedc.gov.uk/bankholiday Dear All,
Below is the most up to date information from Vale regarding the CoVID-19 response, this includes the weekly town & parish update and other information that may have come through, as more information comes down the chain we will send round updates as and when required. Thank you all for your amazing work locally, it is making a huge difference to those at risk and may be ill during this time. Garden Waste Services There’s good news for people in southern Oxfordshire looking for ways to dispose safely of their garden waste. South Oxfordshire and Vale of White Horse district councils have reopened their paid-for garden waste service to new customers. The service has continued throughout the lockdown for existing subscribers. For a short period of time the council and waste contractor, Biffa suspended taking on new customers to prioritise the kerbside household collections while members of the waste collection crews were off sick or self-isolating. Biffa has now built up sufficient resilience in its workforce to enable new customers to join. The service will also take extra garden waste (equivalent of another brown bin e.g. three bin bags) in the week of 11-15 May Harwell vaccine centre Fast-tracked construction of the UK's Vaccines Manufacturing and Innovation Centre at Harwell Campus will accelerate the start of their vital research in the fight against COVID-19. You can read more about the centre in the press release issued by Harwell Campus: https://www.harwellcampus.com/news/vaccines-centre-fast-tracked-at-harwell/ Supporting the homeless in our district A couple of weeks ago we updated you on the excellent work of our housing staff in ensuring all our rough sleepers were offered accommodation within 24 hours of the lockdown announcement. It’s worth pointing out that this was really just the beginning of the hard work as our staff have also been working flat out to secure on-going accommodation for this vulnerable group or residents. So far, we’ve managed this for more than half of the people we currently have in temporary accommodation. Grants funding available We’ll start with some good news – grants of up to £3,000 are currently available for town and parish councils to apply for from Scottish and Southern Electricity towards projects that will specifically support residents in vulnerable situations. They’re encouraging applications for projects that will provide extra help to those who are self-isolating or social shielding, such as the elderly or anybody with underlying health conditions. They’re looking for projects like social delivery services, online advice centres, befriending schemes, etc. You’ll need to be quick to catch the first round of funding - the deadline for applications is 30 April 2020. You can find out more about the fund here and apply for funds through their website. Community support update We’ve had encouraging reports from the voluntary and community groups we’re working with that they are feeling confident and able to provide support to the people that need it on an ongoing basis. We hope this reflects your experience – please do contact our Community Support team if you have any concerns. We have now referred over 452 residents to our network of volunteers across South Oxfordshire and the Vale since the Community Support service began less than a month ago. We’ve also called over 537 residents on the shielded list to check if they needed additional or ongoing support. Food remains the main area people require support. Last week we provided 37 food parcels to residents of both districts that had nobody else to turn to and where we weren’t able to immediately refer them to a volunteer group. This takes the total number of food parcels to 67 food parcels since launching the service, which has helped to feed 74 Adults and 22 children. Please make sure you’re using the correct details (below) to contact our Community Support service and please do share these details widely:
Response to planning letter Since our last update the Leader of the Vale, Cllr Emily Smith has received a response from the Ministry for Housing and Local Government to her letter, which raised issues around targets for determining planning applications and the 5 Year Land Supply during the pandemic. You can read Emily’s letter here and the response from the Ministry here. Business grants update In the past week we’ve made significant headway in paying out the government funding to support small businesses affected by COVID-19. As of yesterday, we’d paid out £17 million across both districts, and we’re well on track to pay all the requests we’ve had by 30 April. We are currently phoning all of the eligible businesses in the district that haven’t yet taken up the offer of support. Bulky waste services return To help residents deal with some of the waste they may have built up during this pandemic we’ve reopened our bulky waste collection service for large household items, such as sofas and washing machines. We had initially suspended the service to focus on collecting kerbside household waste while some of the waste crews were off sick or self-isolating. We will keep the situation under constant review and if necessary, suspend it again if staffing levels become an issue. Whilst recycling centres and charity shops stay closed, we’re urging residents to store any waste that we cannot collect through our regular kerbside service. Finally, going forward I will try and include a directory of helpful web addresses - If you have found any which have been useful for yourselves please let me know and I will include them going forward for others. https://www.oxfordshireallin.org/ https://www.nhs.uk/oneyou/every-mind-matters/coronavirus-covid-19-staying-at-home-tips/ http://www.whitehorsedc.gov.uk/services-and-advice/coronavirus-community-support https://www.oxfordshire.gov.uk/council/coronavirus-covid-19 https://www.gov.uk/coronavirus https://www.gov.uk/guidance/domestic-abuse-how-to-get-help Any questions, please don't hesitate to get in touch with me. Best wishes, and stay well Cllr Simon Howell Watchfield and Shrivenham Ward Vale of White Horse District Council |
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