Comment
The opportunity lost: The death of the Oxfordshire Plan 2050
The recent cancellation of preparation of the Oxfordshire Plan 2050 draws to an end a number of years of collaboration between the Oxfordshire authorities through the Future Oxfordshire Partnership (formerly known as the Oxfordshire Growth Board). Our team discuss why this occurred and what this means for the region.
Although there have been challenges throughout this period, there were also significant achievements, such as the agreed apportionment of Oxford’s unmet needs under the previous plan periods, and in March 2017 the Government committed to the Oxfordshire Housing and Growth Deal to support plans to deliver 100,000 homes by 2031. The deal committed to an Oxfordshire-wide joint statutory spatial plan to be adopted by 2021 (the “Oxfordshire Plan 2050”), and to be supported by £215 million of funding to help deliver more affordable housing and infrastructure improvements to support sustainable development across the county.
That deal of course also included the special planning powers that allowed the council’s to only demonstrate a three year housing land supply. In withdrawing that dispensation, a Written Ministerial Statement issued on 25 March 2021, Christopher Pincher, the Minister of State for Housing, confirmed that Oxfordshire would now need to maintain a five year housing land supply. The Oxfordshire authorities were also due to receive a bespoke Housing Delivery Test requirement upon adoption of the Oxfordshire Plan 2050.
Plan making
Although it is not explicitly stated, it is apparent that disagreements around the apportionment of future housing needs is at the heart of the recent decision to abandon the preparation of the Oxfordshire Plan. The authorities seemingly could not agree as to how to meet Oxford City’s unmet needs. Clearly this will have fundamental implications for the next round of Local Plan-making in the county. The decision to cease work on the Oxfordshire Plan comes as no surprise as political resistance to growth continues to raise its head.
As we discuss elsewhere in this article, and in our previous commentary, through the Oxfordshire Housing and Growth Deal the authorities committed to plan for 100,000 homes between 2011 and 2031 in exchange for a package of funding and planning flexibilities. Whilst the adopted Local Plans broadly meet the 100,000-home requirement, with the approach being taken by the Vale of White Horse and seemingly no agreement as to how housing requirements should be apportioned to the period to 2050, it is clear there could be disparate approaches emerging on housing requirements across Oxfordshire.
The authorities will now be left to grapple with the duty to co-operate and meeting Oxford's unmet needs without an overarching guiding plan and agreed apportionment, which was one of the successes of the Future Oxfordshire Partnership. Whilst the conclusion of the Oxfordshire Plan 2050 process ends a period of uncertainty which has no doubt delayed plan making across the county, we would anticipate it will lead to extended preparation and examination periods for each of the Local Plans as they are now brought forwards.
Previously, before the apportionment was agreed, the West Oxfordshire Local Plan Examination was subject to significant delays until an approach was agreed, whilst other plans were subject to early reviews or required to prepare a ‘daughter’ document to meet these needs. It is difficult to see how this decision will do anything other than slow down plan-making across the county when there is no agreement on housing numbers. We are potentially back to where we were in 2016!
In West Oxfordshire some members are already proposing that housing numbers after 2031 could be reduced through the forthcoming Local Plan Review, which will cover the period to 2040, an initial consultation on which is due to commence in August/September. It remains to be seen whether the Joint Local Plan for the Vale of White Horse and South Oxfordshire Districts will now continue.
Oxford to Cambridge Arc
Whilst much of the focus is understandably on the implications for housing needs, not least in the statement itself, the decision will also have wider implications. The cancellation of the Oxfordshire Plan 2050 follows on from the apparent parking of the Oxford to Cambridge Growth Arc and the Spatial Framework. When the Arc initiative was paused it was suggested this could be taken forward as a locally driven initiative, however with the cancellation of the Oxfordshire Plan the only area within the Arc which was already set up to do this has now fallen apart. It is clear that the appetite for co-ordination is waning and it will be interesting to see how this develops if the Government progresses its intention to remove the duty to co-operate.
Both strategic tiers had also sought to push higher environmental and sustainability requirements and it will be important that these aspirations are brought forward by the authorities themselves in a consistent manner so that the positives of the processes undertaken to date are not entirely lost. In planning on a strategic scale it will also be important that the authorities plan for wider requirements so as to capitalise on the strong economic credentials of Oxfordshire and ensure all facets of this are planned for. In cancelling the Oxfordshire Plan 2050 on the basis of a failure to agree housing requirements, the councils risk failing to capitalise on the wider benefits a strategic approach to plan making could have delivered.
What does it mean for development management and five year housing land supply?
Aside from any significant implications for infrastructure and affordable housing delivery which might arise if the funding associated with the Housing and Growth Deal is withdrawn, the decision to abandon the Oxfordshire Plan 2050 might have wider consequences for Development Management in the county, including in situations where housing land supply is failing.
The deal currently commits the Oxfordshire authorities to plan for the delivery of 100,000 homes between 2011 – 2031. By 1 April 2021, 37,449 dwellings had been completed in the county (using data in published annual monitoring reports), leaving at least 62,551 to be delivered at the half way point. Clearly there needs to be a significant step change and increase in annual delivery rates if the commitment to deliver 100,000 homes stands any chance of being achieved. Steps which might be motivated by aspirations of reducing housing requirements are unlikely to contribute to those residential needs being met. Yet it appears that all the local authorities in Oxfordshire are arguably unable to demonstrate a deliverable five year housing land supply – let alone a significant oversupply.
In this context, there is a difference of opinion between the authorities as to how they seek to calculate their housing land supply position.
Cherwell District Council undertook a ‘Regulation 10A’ review in 2021 and found that its housing requirement (1,142 dwellings per annum, not including provision for the unmet needs of Oxford City) did not need to be reviewed, partly because of considerations including the Housing and Growth Deal. In contrast, the Vale of White Horse (VoWH) District Council concluded in 2021 that it would review its housing requirement and use the ‘standard method’ figure for calculating its housing land supply.
The VoWH ‘standard method’ figure is significantly lower than the requirement in the adopted Local Plan. We do not comment on the merit of the VoWH District Council’s approach in this article, but their approach serves to highlight that within the county, planning decisions will be taken against a backdrop of seeking to supress housing requirements. That approach is in the context of the housing figures which underpinned the Housing and Growth Deal being based on a number of objectives: economic growth; addressing the lack of affordable housing; and affordability issues more generally.
Next year, West Oxfordshire’s Local Plan will be more than five years old and a review will commence later this year. Will the abandonment of the 2050 Plan (and possibly the withdrawal of any funding) influence any decisions to continue using the Local Plan requirement for the purposes of calculating a five year housing land supply, or to revert to the standard method figure? For completeness, the Local Plans in Oxford City and South Oxfordshire will both be five years old in 2025. Of course by that point, we may even have a new planning system to grapple with…
This current situation means that there is a clear lack of consistency between the Oxfordshire authorities in their approaches to the determination of planning applications in terms of delivering on the commitments (to which each of the authorities are still party to unless and until it is withdrawn) of the Housing and Growth Deal.
The Oxfordshire Plan 2050 was not all about housing, but it was also expected to set greater aspirations for design and sustainability measures. Many of the existing Local Plans were adopted several years ago, and in some cases under different political banners. Do they continue to reflect the intentions and aspirations of members and planning committees? The failure of the Oxfordshire Plan 2050 represents a lost opportunity to establish a consistent requirement throughout the county and which would enable planning decisions to be better aligned with expectations.
Infrastructure funding
In order to achieve the levels of growth outlined through the Oxfordshire Housing and Growth Deal, including the delivery of 100,000 homes set out above, and succeed in expanding Oxfordshire’s knowledge economy and growing contribution to the UK exchequer (approximately £21 billion per year pre-Covid), it was anticipated that the Oxfordshire Plan 2050 would align funding, transport, infrastructure, and strategic planning locally, to deliver the spatial vision for the region.
Of the £215 million funding secured through Housing and Growth Deal, £5 million was sought in resourcing to get a joint plan in place, alongside £150 million funding for key infrastructure to “unlock” housing sites across the district.
These projects include improvements to strategic road and rail, cycle routes and footpaths, as well as some social infrastructure such as expanded school provision with these schemes being funded either fully or part by the Housing and Growth Deal. The most recent up-to-date list of infrastructure projects, and proportion of funding identified by the Future Oxfordshire Partnership (as of December 2021) can be found here.
Whilst we understand that the final tranche of the £150 million funding stream for strategic infrastructure has already been received, the withdrawal of the Oxfordshire 2050 Local Plan, at a time of rising cost-of-living crisis and continued affordability issues within the county, raises significant doubts as to the success of what was intended to be a long-term, comprehensive and integrated approach of delivering truly sustainable development in Oxfordshire. It is also unclear at this time whether the government can claw back that money and have the political will to do so.
Recent committee minutes demonstrate that there remain significant barriers to successfully delivering these projects in order to support the housing and economic numbers as originally anticipated by the Housing and Growth Deal. Warnings have been raised that budget allocations of existing projects and rising construction costs have put at risk a number of identified infrastructure schemes.
Indeed, a report to the Future Oxfordshire Partnership in June 2022 identified at least four projects which are forecasting cost pressures (Tramway Improvements, North Oxford Corridor – A44 Cassington to Loop Farm, North Oxford Corridor – Kidlington Roundabout, and Access to Witney at Shores Green) and require additional funding from other sources.
The cost of non-delivery of at least three of these could see a shortfall of several thousand homes across Cherwell, West Oxfordshire and Oxford City respectively.
Whilst interim funding solutions have been identified, they are by no means a silver bullet. The re-allocation of funds away from other Growth Deal infrastructure projects, namely the Woodstock Road Corridor and the Banbury Road Corridor improvements (resulting a reduction of 100 new dwellings), seems the lesser of two evils. However, there is more to be said as global resource constraints, rising energy prices, and the implications of the red diesel rebate continue to loom over construction of these projects, and leave the door locked to achieving the housing growth expected in Oxfordshire Growth Deal.
What next?
With the withdrawal of the Joint Spatial Strategy, the question remains how the Oxford Authorities expect to deliver strategic level of growth at a local scale, and how the funding gap to deliver county-wide improvements can be bridged. The onus now falls on individual emerging Local Plans, tackling vested local political interests, and whether the buck is passed to developers to fund the collective pot through S106 monies and unlock the housing sites themselves. It is hoped further clarity will emerge at the Future Oxfordshire Partnership meetings in September.
To discuss what the cancellation of the Oxfordshire Plan 2050 could mean for development in the region, please get in touch with Tim Burden, David Murray-Cox, Donna Palmer or Peter Davis.
18 August 2022
