Have your say

Listening to you

It is very important that you have a say on how our services are planned and run and how your council tax is spent.

Consultation helps us to stay in touch with what our customers need and want. This is really important when we need to make difficult decisions that affect the people of Oxfordshire.

Our aims

We have five key values which are to:

• listen to your ideas and be honest about the things we are doing
• make sure everyone can have their say
• consider everything people say when we make decisions
• provide feedback to the people who have their say
• say what we will do with everyone’s ideas and feedback.

What is the Oxfordshire Voice panel?

Oxfordshire Voice is a panel of people living in Oxfordshire. There are over 3,000 volunteers who give up some of their time to answer surveys.

Members can be asked to take part in other activities such as online or group discussions. We let each member know how their information has been used in regular newsletters.

Contacting your councillor

Your county councillor can help if you are worried about our services. They can offer advice or direct you to someone who can help. Some councillors offer one-to-one meetings in their communities.

What is scrutiny?

The role of scrutiny is to look at how well the county council is run. This is important as we are committed to providing excellent services to the local community.

Scrutiny can:

• question the people who make important decisions and offer new ideas
• question how we will make improvements
• support ideas about the best ways to spend our money
• question the way things are done
• share ideas and information from local people and service users
• encourage all of our services to work closely together.

Sharing a serious concern

You can tell us is if you have a serious concern about:

• a council service
• employee
• councillor
• an organisation we work with.

This could include things such as:

• theft or misuse of public money
• pollution
• discrimination
• physical or verbal abuse
• health and safety concerns.

We would like you to share your concerns at an early stage but we know that it can be difficult and worrying. This is why we promise to protect you when you raise a concern and do our best to protect your identity

How do I vote?

If you want to vote you need to register. This means that you will be on a voting list near to where you live.

You can vote in three ways:

• By going to a polling station. If you are registered to vote you will get a card telling you where to go.
• By post. Any voter can decide to vote by post instead of voting at the polling station.
• In some situations you can get someone to vote for you.