Ken Arlett
Born and educated in Henley, married to Dorothy. A former SODC Councillor with over 12 years’ experience.
Henley is the ‘Jewel in the Crown’ for South Oxfordshire, however, over the past dozen years there has been no opposition to the Conservatives at SODC, hence Henley Town Council has lost the following:
- Funding for its One Stop Shop in the Town Hall.
- Funding for its Town Centre manager.
- Funding for Tourism Information office.
- Loss of two Police Community Support Officers.
- No improvement to car parking in town.
- No real support for Air Quality improvements.
We have seen massive cuts for community groups and there is no budget to look in to parking at all. The SODC budget this year has a £2million deficit!
The one bright spark over at SODC has been HRG Councillor Stefan Gawrysiak, who has brought air quality improvements and affordable/social housing to the table.
With my experience at SODC and now chairing the Town Council’s Planning and Neighbourhood Plan Committees, I believe it is time to engage with SODC strongly – they are the planning authority for Henley and we need to ensure our concerns are met for the future.
HRG have managed to ensure that in the SODC Local Plan, we have only 156 more homes to provide in Henley (reduced from 677), I will help ensure that 40% of these are affordable homes.