Henley Leisure Centre is now open to the public following its £2.4 million refurbishment. The improvements made to the centre include extending the gym, a new reception and café area, a new accessible customer entrance and new lift provision for first floor access, downstairs viewing area for the swimming pool; new wet changing village, area for group change, dry changing rooms and disabled changing facilities; two refurbished squash courts with glass backs; purpose-built crèche; refurbished dance studio; new multi-use space and viewing area upstairs new sauna and steam room; new meeting and event room and extended car park.

The facilities at Wallingford Riverside Park are now open for the summer season. There is an 18 pitch campsite and amenity block opened, a paddling pool and a 20m heated outdoor swimming pool. Car parking and refreshments are available at the site.

You can now recycle cartons at one of four new carton recycling banks in the district. This means you can now recycle the paper-based drinks and liquid food cartons (such as milk, fruit juice and soup cartons) that previously could not be recycled. Tetra pak cartons are made from cardboard, as well as thin layers of aluminium and plastic and therefore cannot be recycled in your green recycling box. The news banks are at:

If you use the community waste vehicle (skip) to dispose of some of your waste please note that there is a new schedule for this which came into effect at the beginning of May. This service is for larger items of household waste, such as broken furniture, that cannot be collected by the kerbside collection. As there are many locations and different times on the schedule it is not possible to reproduce it in this article. Please either visit the district council website or phone the District Council’s Environmental services on 01491 823203 for further details. Please note that the community waste vehicles cannot collect household electrical items, garden waste or hazardous material such as paint and batteries.

The County Council together with First Great Western have secured government cash for schemes to improve accessibility for people with disabilities or impaired mobility at eight rail stations in the county. The stations that will benefit are: Appleford, Charlbury, Culham, Didcot Parkway, Henley-on-Thames, Kingham, Oxford and Shiplake. The works are being part-financed by a scheme called ‘Access for All’ which aims to improve accessibility at railway stations throughout Great Britain. Improvements are being are:

This new way of nominating people to the District Council housing register will come into effect in the summer as has previously been reported. The new service will be called Homechoice. It will enable home seekers to see the properties that are available either online or via a newsletter. They can then ask to be considered for a particular one. Bids will be considered according to priory need. Currently there are two housing registers one held by the District Council and the other by SOHA (South Oxfordshire Housing Association). The SOHA list will close at the end of May and there will then be just one register. All those currently on the SOHA list will be advised that the list is closing and be encouraged to make sure that they on the new register. In the run up to the new system going live there will be road shows and drop-in sessions to explain how the process works. These will be advertised as widely as possible.