Thriving Communities Strategy

This strategy sets out how we aim to work with partners and our diverse communities to build back fairer and create thriving communities.

To create thriving communities, we want everyone to have the best chance of good physical and mental health at all stages of life. This means promoting good health and social connections, valuing difference and being active in volunteering are important to thriving communities. We need to work together to ensure everyone in Oxford can get involved in leisure, culture and community opportunities.

This strategy aims to create a shared purpose for the Council, partners and communities, making the most of the resources we have, ensuring our investments have the greatest possible impact, and that our work is based on insight.

COVID-19, and the ongoing cost of living crisis, have increased inequalities, which are expected to get worse unless we start taking action now. Like most councils, our budgets are under immense pressure: we have seen a £7 million reduction in funding because of austerity measures. While we will do all we can to protect services for the most vulnerable, we will have tough choices to stay in budget and need to change how we work.

Oxford’s inequality in data

• Oxford is the UK’s second most unequal city1
• Ten out of Oxford’s 83 neighbourhoods are amongst the 20% most deprived in England2
• 22% of adults have no or low educational qualifications3
• Average house prices in Oxford are 17.3 times average earnings at over £500,0004
• One in four of children lives below the poverty line (after housing costs), rising to 36% of children in Blackbird Leys
• Life expectancy is much shorter in Oxford’s most deprived areas - 13.8 years for men and 11.2 for women.

We cannot tackle these deeply ingrained inequalities unless we take a whole system approach, not just to health but to living in our city. This strategy is focused on prevention and addressing the root causes of issues that create poor opportunities and experiences.

“We need to stop just pulling people out of the river.

We need to go upstream and find out why they’re falling in.”

Archbishop Desmond Tutu

Ethnicity and poverty are linked, with all the associated issues for health, education, employment and life chances. The Runnymede Trust, a leading UK race equality thinktank, has published a report on how the UK cost of living crisis will disproportionately affect people of colour. Black and minority ethnic people are currently 2.5 times more likely to be in poverty than white people.

We are developing new structures so our teams can work more collaboratively in Oxford’s neighbourhoods. Our vision is to place customers at the heart of service delivery; focusing on prevention and meeting customer needs including those who are in crisis or need our help the most. Maximising people and place potential, reducing inequalities, benefiting from digital engagement, and facilitating solutions to deliver meaningful and tangible outcomes. We will increasingly align our work with partners, creating shared insights and more joined-up solutions.

This strategy brings together four outdated strategies (Leisure, Culture, Community Centres and our Children and Young Persons’ Strategy) that had overlapping outcomes, and uses a simple 4Ps framework:

• People – implementing our Thriving Communities Principles e.g. doing things with people not to them, and building on what works well
• Pride – celebrating diverse cultural heritage, encouraging trust and belonging and ensuring inclusivity 
• Place – inclusive spaces and places
• Progress – a range of ways to demonstrate the impact of our work and continually learn.

This strategy sits alongside the Housing, Homeless and Rough Sleeping Strategy, Citizen Experience Strategy, Oxford’s Economic Strategy, and the Net Zero Oxford Action Plan. It has been developed in a rapidly changing environment, with fundamental changes in the way we live our lives.

Health is intrinsically linked to inequality, but better societal factors can make a significant difference to good health. The February 2021 health and social care white paper shows the need for a more integrated system, with one in three patients admitted to hospital as an emergency now having five or more health conditions, up from one in ten a decade ago.

One of the clearest examples of how crises like the pandemic, and now the cost of living, increases inequality is seen in research on the social gradient of health. This shows that the lower one’s social and economic status, the poorer one’s health is likely to be. The importance of these social determinants of health are highlighted the following quote.

“A decent job, a good home and friends are more important to good health than the NHS”.

Duncan Selbie, former Chief Executive of Public Health England

Working differently creates an opportunity to integrate our services, such as leisure and culture, with partners like the NHS to develop a preventative, person-centred, long-term approach. Our contract for leisure services expires in 2024, so we now have a window of opportunity to reimagine how Oxford’s leisure centres could play a more substantial role in tackling health inequalities that is more integrated with work by health and Oxfordshire County Council public health providers. The recently produced Fit for the Future: the role of district councils in improving health and wellbeing (PDF) makes a strong case for integrating council-run leisure and wellbeing services into the health system.

[1] Gini co-efficient

[2] The English Indices of Deprivation (2019)

[3] Census (2011)

[4] Centre for Cities (2019)