About Us

About Oxford City Council

Oxford City Council is the democratically elected body for Oxford. In partnership with others, we provide a wide range of services for approximately 150,000 residents, 83,000 people who work in Oxford and 7.5 million people who visit the city every year.

Oxford City Council is a District Council, with responsibility for running local planning, housing, Council Tax collection, housing benefits, business rates, environmental health, licensing, electoral registration, refuse and recycling collection, leisure services and parks, economic development, social inclusion, community cohesion, street wardens and park rangers, markets and fairs, tourism and cemeteries.

The Council is composed of 48 Councillors, representing 24 wards (two Councillors for each ward), with half elected every two years. Councillors are democratically accountable to residents of their ward. The overriding duty of Councillors is to the whole community, but they have a special duty to their constituents, including those who did not vote for them.

Oxford City Council has a constitution that sets out how the Council operates, how decisions are made and the procedures which are followed to ensure that the Council is efficient, transparent and accountable to local people.

About Oxford

Oxford is one of the most photographed, filmed, and written about cities in the world. The enduring images are of historic Oxford; these images are vital to our flourishing tourist industry because it is historic Oxford that tourists visit in millions. It is, however, only one part of our city’s story. Oxford at the beginning of the 21st century, while still with its historic core and green spaces, is a far cry from its media stereotype.

Contemporary Oxford is an economic hub with a world-class knowledge economy that underpins continued prosperity, not just in the Oxfordshire sub-region, but in the south east of England and beyond. In addition to being a major tourist destination, it is also an important shopping area and the cultural centre of the region. There is a need for continued business development and growth within
constrained boundaries.

In marked contrast to other parts of the county, Oxford is ethnically and culturally diverse, with the third highest minority ethnic population in the south east. It is not just diverse, but also – because it has the highest proportion of students in England and Wales – youthful, mobile and continually self-renewing.

Dynamic urban environments provide great opportunities and also difficult challenges. Oxford is no exception. The city is a densely packed urban space – covering 29 square miles – with very high levels of housing density. There are severe pressures on housing stock, with large concentrations of homes in multiple occupation and significant numbers of homeless and other vulnerable groups. Some areas of the city suffer multiple levels of deprivation – low skills, low incomes and high levels of crime. Central Oxford in particular suffers from traffic congestion and pollution.

This dynamic mix of opportunities and challenges is at the heart of the distinctive character of contemporary Oxford.