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Oxford Direct Services

Our Vision & Mission

The OSP seeks to facilitate, through effective collaboration between local agencies and partners, a thriving city and surrounding area where everyone enjoys a good quality of life - environmentally, economically and socially, and where long standing inequalities are addressed.

What is the Oxford Strategic Partnership?

The Oxford Strategic Partnership (OSP) was founded in 2003 and brings together senior representatives from the public, business, community and voluntary sectors. The OSP helps to provide direction for the city's future, respond to local priorities and engage more effectively with local concerns.  This partnership for the city promotes collaboration and openness and provides opportunities to access funding and share resources more easily. 

The OSP is an influencer, not an operational organisation. It brings organisations together to work in partnership, identifying strategic city challenges that will benefit from collaboration, and prioritising them based on where the partnership can add most value.

OSP Vision and Mission

The OSP seeks to facilitate, through effective collaboration between local agencies and partners, a thriving city and surrounding area where everyone enjoys a good quality of life - environmentally, economically and socially, and where long standing inequalities are addressed.

OSP Aims

  • Identify current major issues and concerns that will benefit from collective intervention
  • Identify and engage relevant partners, and facilitate their working together to develop and implement collaborative interventions
  • Empower partners and communities to take action
  • Evaluate outcomes to inform future issues and concerns

The partners on the OSP meet as a Steering Group every quarter and provide strategic guidance on partnership priorities to meet that vision and champion the development of action plans. You can read the minutes of our meetings.

Our current OSP theme - Inclusive Growth

The OSP in partnership with the Oxfordshire Local Enterprise Partnership (OxLEP) held a series of seminars across 2019 and early 2020 on Inclusive Growth.  

Oxford and Oxfordshire are among the fastest growing local economies in the UK but also one of the least equal, so we wanted to examine what fundamental structural changes may be required to ensure our future growth delivers benefits to all residents and serves to narrow the inequalities gap.

Through the seminars the OSP and OxLEP developed a common understanding of this challenge, learnt more about the measures and policy interventions required and the strategies/approaches being trialed elsewhere. This helped inform and lay the foundations for an emerging ‘Inclusive Economy Commission’ which we plan to establish in 2021 with support from a wide range of cross-sectoral partners. The Commission once established is anticipated to host Task and Finish Groups on areas such as Social Value and Procurement as well as support the implementation of projects to make a meaningful positive impact on inequities in income and opportunity across Oxfordshire.

For more information about the seminars visit our Inclusive Growth Seminars page.

Who is involved?

Currently the partnership contains several key organisations and individuals, all with a specific interest or experience in improving quality of life across the city.  You can view a complete list of members . The members have adopted a set of guiding principles to promote openness, transparency and accountability as well as a terms of reference

Our Priorities