With pressure to ensure update-to-date local plans are in place, we are seeing significant activity across Oxfordshire with all five local authorities having recently published or due to shortly publish draft Local Plans for consultation.
The prevailing themes of the local plan reviews are planning for the delivery of housing, employment, and infrastructure, including policies for sustainable growth and net zero carbon.
Oxford City Council is the most advanced with its local plan review, with the imminent publication of a Pre-Submission Draft Local Plan for in November 2023 for public consultation, following Cabinet approval in October. Following this final consultation, the draft Local Plan will be submitted for examination in the New Year.
The City has calculated its housing need in conjunction with Cherwell District Council – the only authority prepared to directly cooperate with the City since the collapse of the Joint Spatial Plan in 2022. The housing need for Oxford is for 1,322 new dwellings per annum from 2020 up until 2040. However, the capacity of the City can only accommodate 481 dwellings per annum.
The Draft Plan wishes to maximise the density of its sites and promote housing on all employment sites, but at this stage, is not explicitly looking to increased height to meet the need. This will likely form the key battleground in Oxford over the next decade.
Cherwell have already accepted this principle and has increased its housing requirement from 1,009 per annum to 1,293 per annum, assuming a proportionate share of the unmet need across Oxfordshire. The position of other authorities is less clear.
Cherwell recently published its Regulation 18 Consultation Draft Local Plan sets out a policy for 25,860 homes in the plan period. A Call for Sites exercise has been undertaken to identify potential development sites that could contribute to meeting this requirement.
Consultation on West Oxfordshire Local Plan 2041: ‘Ideas and Objectives’ (Regulation 18) was undertaken between August and October 2023, alongside a Call for Sites consultation. The authority is intending to move forward with Preferred Options in Winter 2023/24. The initial consultation addressed a series of potential growth scenarios, and it remains to be seen whether housing and employment will continue to be focussed on existing identified centres or whether a further new settlement or more dispersed growth will be planned for throughout the county.
South Oxfordshire and Vale of White Horse are currently working up policies to be set out in a Joint Local Plan 2041. The authorities published an updated Local Development Scheme in September 2023, which indicates that Preferred Options Consultation (Regulation 18) is due to be held in January/February 2024.
