A PARISH councillor celebrating 40 years in office has said councils in Oxfordshire have become “stifled by bureaucracy”.

John Roper, 74, became a member of the Weston-on-the-Green Parish Council in June 1971.

He was chairman for more than two decades and during his tenure, has helped the village create a new playing field and campaigned against a planned eco-town for Bicester.

But he said times had changed since the 1970s.

Mr Roper said: “In the past 10 years, rules have started to stifle the actions of parish councils. I know there needs to be regulations about the spending of money and so on, but sometimes action needs to be taken.

“The parish council is the basic route of democracy. We look after our local areas, but it has got harder in the past 10 years.”

Parish councils get money from the annual council tax bill, but most local authority powers fall to district and county councils.

Yet they are seen as the “voice” of small communities in making clear residents’ view to councils and the Government.

Mr Roper, who raised children Simon and Mark with wife Ann in the village, got involved when he was working on a project to renovate the village hall.

He said: “Someone encouraged me to go for the council, so I did. I’ve always been quite commu-nity minded and it seemed like a good thing to do. I never thought I’d be doing it this long though. It has been such a big part of my life.

“My son Simon was born in December 1970 and I joined the council in 1971, so he said he’d never seen much of me on Wednesday nights.”

Mr Roper said the village, between Bicester and Kidlington, was still “a great place to live”.

He said: “There are very few, what I would call ‘local’ people here now, though I wasn’t local when I first came here.

“There have also been one or two deluxe developments and main drainage was introduced here in the 1960s, which was the source of many problems for years.”

But life on the parish council hasn’t always been easy. In 2007, he was accused of bringing the council into disrepute, by not declaring an interest when discussing the village field because he lived opposite it.

Investigating officer Peter Cruden cleared him of two allegations of misconduct but said he would “benefit from training to raise his awareness of his obligations”.

The grandfather of five has no plans to retire. He said: “I’m hoping to make it to my 50th anniversary. The biggest problem here at the moment is the volume of traffic. I was out on the street counting traffic the other day, and I counted 75 vehicles passing by in just half an hour.

“Something needs to be done.”