What is a Market Town Partnership and what can it do for Woodstock?

Woodstock Market Town Partnership is an informal group of residents from Woodstock and the surrounding villages whose purpose is to bring together the various strands or public and commercial life in Woodstock for the greater good.  The partnership consists of Town and District Councillors, business people, representatives from Woodstock's schools, from the voluntary sector, and from the the clubs, societies and sports associations in the town.  Blenheim Palace also is represented on the group.

Residents may recall that some years ago the idea of a Town Plan Group was suggested and the Partnership has grown out of that original initiative.  At that time SEEDA, the South East of England Regional Development Agency was establishing a Market Towns Fund in collaboration with the South East Rural Towns Partnership and the Countryside Agency. The fund provided some £7 million over seven years.  That money has been fully allocated and the new coalition government in Whitehall has said it will disband SEEDA along with many other so-called "Quangos" in the interests of greater localism. 

In place of SEEDA the new government is proposing Local Enterprise Partnerships (LEP) and Oxfordshire County Council is bidding to set up an LEP based broadly on the existing boundaries of Oxfordshire.  It remains to be seen whether Oxfordshire's bid will be successful.  It has the strong backing of Cllr Keith Mitchell, himself one of the most influential local politicians in the country.  Against that, many business leaders are suggesting that LEPs need to be of a bigger size than a single county.  We shall see.  Read about the new proposals for Local Enterprise Partnerships

Whatever happens, it seems inconceivable that this government, whose natural constituency is the market towns of England, will allow these communities to lose ground to the big metropolitan cities.  Already, a fund of £1 billion has been established to provide the new LEPs with finance to help ease the anticipated budget cuts coming our way soon.  This fund is primarily aimed at communities particularly affected by the public service cuts and Woodstock and Oxfordshire does fall within that category - it has a large proportion of employees within the public service sector.

The recession will end.  The economy will grow and the good times will return.  And when they do, Woodstock needs to be ready to ensure that it is not left behind.  We live in a competitive world and we have to run to stay still.  Ask any business in Woodstock.  It's only by constantly re-inventing yourself that you keep ahead of the competition.  It's the same for our schools.

The Woodstock Market Town Partnership will, I hope, become a permanent fixture that will continually update its data and information and always be looking at how the town can be promoted in the best interests of its residents and businesses communities.

The Partnership's first task is to establish the facts and figures about our town and the neighbouring villages.  To do this we have set up task force groups who will be following the worksheet templates suggested by the South East Rural Towns Partnership (SERTP) of a so-called "market town healthcheck".  This will ensure that we end up with a clear and well reasoned vision for the future.  The vision has to be realistic and achievable and our research must involve a wide diversity of interests and experiences throughout the community and beyond into the surrounding parishes.

We will be conducting interviews and issuing questionnaires as part of the research project.   Some residents will remember the Town Appraisal of 1998.  That exercise provided valuable data and remains an important source of information.  But in the new competitive funding environment it could not possibly be sufficient.  So we need your views on what’s good about Woodstock; what’s not so good; where we want to be in, say, 10 or 20 years and how we want to town to look. We want to know what you think is practicable, desirable and achievable to turn the vision into reality.

And if our vision includes significant capital expenditure, what sort of projects might we be talking about?   Well, of course we shouldn’t pre-empt the process, but sometimes it’s useful to have an idea of what might be in the frame as it were. So here are a few ideas. They may go nowhere or they may command some support, but they’re only ideas and it’s up to you:-

We might want to extend car parking facilities in the town. Or to improve pedestrian and cycling access from Old Woodstock to the town instead of running the gauntlet of the A44. There are already many who seek an improved or replaced Community Centre or Youth Club facility. Some may support an extension to the Farmers Market. Others may prefer to improve some of our less attractive streets or cul de sacs with new paving or landscaping.

But really, we are starting with a blank sheet, as we should be. Please let any of the Partnership team know what you think. The team, at present, consists of Chris Baylis from WakeUpToWoodstock, Phil Morgan from the Marlborough School, Jill Dunsmore from Woodstock Town Council, Brian Yoxall, Bob Pomfret from the Woodstock Youth Club, Barry Wheatley from the Federation of Small Businesses, and me, Colin Carritt, Partnership Coordinator.

Colin Carritt 01993 811977

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