Hazel Dawe, party treasurer

The Labour-run City Council have seized direct control of East Oxford Community Centre (EOCC) on the Cowley Road) and plan to sell off half the Community Centre site and 'improve' the rest (funded by further sell-offs; East Oxford Games Hall and the Film Oxford building).

The Centre was run by the East Oxford Community Association before the Council power-grab. The Centre is home to many local groups (including Fusion Arts & Oxford Action Resource Centre) and most nights all available rooms are booked out. Both the Games Hall and Film Oxford are also well used.

The Greens are contesting claims by Labour that they can re-provide 'improved' facilities on a site half the current size whilst incorporating those activities previously carried out in the Film Oxford building and East Oxford Games Hall. 

The Greens have put forward an alternative solution - to instead develop land in nearby Cave Street for housing and instead redevelop the Community Centre land for use by social and community enterprises.  This will provide MORE housing and retain the integrity of the EOCC site. 

This is a call for candidates to stand for the Green Party at the next elections to Parliament and to councils in Oxfordshire.

Given the turmoil in the Conservative party, there may be a General Election in the next 6 months. In November, we will select our candidates for the 6 constituencies: Banbury, Henley, Oxford East, Oxford West and Abingdon, Wantage, and Witney. If you are interested, fill in the form below.

We need more Green councillors in Oxfordshire. Could you follow in the footsteps of our Green Party councillors in Oxford, and stand for election? You could improve the quality of our councils by representing the people and views that the governing parties ignore.

Or you could help organise events and campaigns in your ward. Could you get local people to come out and join the campaign?

In May 2019 there will be elections for evrery councillor in South Oxfordshire and the Vale of the White Horse and 1/3 of the counclllors in Cherwell and West Oxfordshire district councils. Then in 2020 there will be elections for 2 councillors in each of the new Oxford City wards.

We need candidates to start right now, preparing for the elections in 2019 and 2020. Voters like to vote for people they have heard from over time, rather than those who just turn up in the last few weeks.

We will arrange meets the councillors sessions, where you can find out what Green city, town and parish councillors do and how they got elected. To find out more, fill in the form at the bottom of the page.

What you need to do to stand as a candidate

Do you want to win, or just to stand? If you just want to give people in your area a chance to vote Green, rather than being forced to vote for a worse party, you just need to get your name on the ballot paper. On the other hand, if you want to help people as an elected councillor, you need to run a serious campaign as a candidate in a target seat.

Non-target candidates

There are places where we cannot win in the next election. It takes time to grow the Green Party in a ward until there are enough local supporters to run a campaign to win. In those areas we need a candidate to stand, while a ward organiser can run a few events and campaigns on local issues until the Green Party and the candidate are better known.

All you need to do as a non-target candidate is:

1. Get nominated. You need to get 10 voters in your ward to sign a form saying they think you should be allowed to stand. They don't need to vote for you, or be Green supporters. They can be friends, family, or just neighbours.
2. Supply a photograph suitable for the web site.
3. Write a short election statement for the web site. A bit about yourself, and a bit about what you would do if elected.

If you are interested, fill out the form at the bottom of this page.

Target candidates

There are a number of seats where we have won, or came close to winning in the past. If you don't know what a councillor does, take at look at this councillor role description.

Obviously, such a campaign needs more work than just getting nominated. Candidates are expected to take an active role in their election campaign, including:

• join or build a campaign team, including a campaign manager, and senior roles to manage volunteers, publicity, data and fundraising,
• work with your team to produce a campaign plan,
• talk to hundreds of voters on the doorstep and at other events,
• taking part in campaign team decisions, including campaign messages,
• respond to voters questions and concerns.

Candidates selected for target seats who commit to work hard enough to win will get support from the Oxfordshire Green Party, including guidance, opportunities for training and mentoring, technical support and funding.

We are committed to supporting people stand for election. If you have support needs to allow you to stand for election—from childcare to disability support needs—please discuss these with us soon so we can arrange support. Being in the Green Party means we are committed to work as a team, no one has to do anything alone, we will find a way to help in any aspect of campaigning and when people become Councillors.

Act now

If you are at all interested in standing as a candidate, or helping organise a campaign for a candidate, please complete the form below, and the Elections Committee will get back to you with more details.

If you want any more information on what is involved in standing as candidate, please contact the Elections Co-ordinator, David Newman.

What is your Banbury candidate up to? See here:

http://middletongreen.org/2015/01/25/visit-to-banbury-market-17th-january-2015/

Oxfordshire Greens support the launch of Rural Action Oxfordshire in Witney. Parliamentary candidates Stuart Macdonald, Witney and Ian Middleton, Banbury and Bicester with Green Party activists at the launch.

Achttps://www.facebook.com/banburyandcherwellgreenparty/photos/a.447269295292943.103600.350985918254615/920810761272125/?type=1&theater

A big thank you to everyone who came to our 12^th night event and made it such a success. I hope you all enjoyed yourselves as much as I did. There was certainly a great buzz around the place.

We made £193 for the Green Party as well as having fun ourselves.

However, somebody left a dark grey Marks and Spencer’s V necked pullover behind.  Please do get in touch if that was you: Hazel Dawe 07944471083 or hazel.dawe@greenparty.org.uk

Oxford is now the most unaffordable place to live in the UK. Houses cost more than 11 times average wages. The country and Oxford's council have a housing crisis on their hands.

Too often, people paying rent get poor service from rogue agencies and landlords. Greens want to take action to drive up standards in rented housing and to tackle the burden of rent.

We believe that access to housing is a human right—the council must do more to meet the housing needs of people in Oxford. Greens support increasing the number of council and social homes available to those who need them.

No council houses have been completed in the last year in Oxford. So when suitable houses become available on the local market, Oxford City Council should purchase them to increase the council housing stock.

This year we are printing twice as many copies of Green News, the Oxfordshire Green Party's newspaper, to get our message out across Oxfordshire. We need your help to print 26,000 copies.

The press are happy to publicise UKIP, but rarely even talk about the Green Party. We saw that in the European Election campaign, and now the broadcasters have decided to include one party with a single MP in the leadership debate, but not the Green Party. We cannot rely on them, we have have to do it ourselves.

In Green News, your neighbours will hear from our parliamentary candidates what we are doing on issues such as affordable housing, care for the vulnerable, fracking, renewable energy, flooding and what our councils are not doing.

26,000 copies of Green News will be delivered around the county to publicise our candidates and the Green Fair. It will cost us just over £1000 to print. Please help.

• £8 pays for a bundle to be delivered to 200 houses in your street.
• £40 will pay for 1000.
• £80 pays for copies for a whole council ward.

Please chip in what you can, and make this a successful Green News, and a good start to our general election campaign.

Great Bee summit at the Natural History Museum in Oxford today. Big thank you to local Friends of the Earth for organising it. Great questions from our two councillors, David Williams and Elise Benjamin. Both disproving, from different perspectives that Defra's moan of 'not enough evidence' is rubbish. and just a pathetic excuse to do nothing while the planet is ruined.

When you have volunteered to help the Oxfordshire Green Party, please tell us something about your skills.

For some tasks, we need specialist skills, hence this long list.

But most tasks anyone can do, given the training we provide.

Help us hold your local Council to account

Oxfordshire Green Party is running campaigns to fight homelessness, save local community facilities, tackle air pollution, ban single-use plastics and generally improve the quality of your local council services by getting more Green councillors elected. Our Green councillors have already got local councils to divest from fossil fuels, improve cycling facilities and require 50% social housing in new developments.

We don't have much money, but we do have thousands of members and supporters in Oxfordshire. Will you join us to help make a difference in your local area? Please sign up below to volunteer in any way you can. 

We are campaigning all year round on local issues and to get more Green councillors elected. If you have just a few hours to spare please do phone Kate Robinson on 07582 903996 to find how you can help, at a time that suits you.

THANK YOU