Archive for category: News

South Oxfordshire and Vale of White Horse District Councils have set out plans to change the way their garden waste service is paid for in 2025.

The councils’ have agreed the introduction of a permit scheme from April 2025 which will include subscribers receiving a sticker for their bins to identify them as fully paid-up garden waste customers.

This kind of scheme is offered successfully by many other local authorities, including in neighbouring West Oxfordshire.

When customers sign up and pay for the scheme in 2025, they will be sent a garden waste permit sticker to put on their bin/or bins, which will help the waste collection crews identify which bins should be emptied. The permits will act in a similar way to a parking permit as a proof of subscription payment. All subscribers will receive a new sticker annually each time they renew.

This will help to ensure that only households that have paid for the service have their brown garden waste bins emptied.

The changes are part of the councils’ ongoing work to improve the efficiency and value of public services.

The garden waste subscriptions currently run via annual direct debit payments from the date people signed up for the scheme. Next year, the councils will stop taking direct debit payments for the service.  Customers will instead make a single annual payment by debit or credit card – so that everyone’s payment year will run from 1 April to 31 March each year.

The council will directly contact all customers, via letters and email, in plenty of time to remind them to renew.

Benefits to customers include an all-new online system so they can manage their account and change their details much more easily. This will also mean the councils can contact people quickly if there are any disruptions to the service, such as during adverse weather.

Current subscribers will receive notification of the changes with this year’s invoices. This will provide more information on the new system in 2025 as well as details of changes to their direct debit payment this year and the annual fee increase to cover the cost of running the service.

FAQ covering all the changes is available on our garden waste section: South FAQ. The councils’ customer services team will also be on hand to assist with any queries customers have.

The latest state of play on the revamp of the Kingston Blount Play Area is now on this website.

See: https://www.astonrowantparishcouncil.gov.uk/kingston-blount-play-area/

Another five historic images, of people from times gone by, have been uploaded.

See https://www.astonrowantparishcouncil.gov.uk/historic-images

A note from SODC:

Residents in South Oxfordshire are officially the best recyclers in the country, with residents in the Vale of White Horse a close third, according to a government league table published yesterday.

However, both districts are now encouraging residents to further boost this good work by turning their efforts to reducing and reusing where possible.

The Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) officially published the recycling performance league table on Wednesday 31 January. South Oxfordshire and Vale of White Horse District Councils were placed in the top three of the recycling tables for English local authorities. South Oxfordshire had been ranked the highest for household waste recycling rates in 2022/23 at 61.6% and Vale of White Horse in third place with 60.9%. Each council has been in the top 5 for the last five years.

Alongside the high performing collection rates for both councils, locally, a recent waste satisfaction survey has yielded encouraging results for the councils’ household waste collections, indicating a high level of resident approval with this side of the service. An impressive 82% of respondents expressed satisfaction, or high satisfaction, with the overall quality of the waste and recycling services provided.

Another five historic images of the parish have been uploaded.

See: https://www.astonrowantparishcouncil.gov.uk/historic-images/