South Oxfordshire LOCAL PLAN 2031

REFINED OPTIONSSTAGE TWO OF THE PROCESS

FEBRUARY 2015

Please share your opinions & help shape ourSouth Oxfordshire

For further information please visit our website

www.southoxon.gov.uk/options or telephone 01235 540546

www.southoxon.gov.uk/newlocalplan

Have your say by 2 April 2015!We are making progress with preparing our Local Plan 2031 and determining where new homes should be built in South Oxfordshire.

Now is the time for you to help shape this process. Plans can only be truly successful if they are rooted in local knowledge and an appreciation of what residents want, so your views count. Tell us what you think now by:• Viewing the consultation document, including our

background evidence, online at www.southoxon.gov.uk/options

• Visiting our offi ces (South Oxfordshire District Council, C/o Abbey House, Abbey Close, Abingdon, OX14 3JE) or local libraries, leisure centres and one stop shops across our district and completing a response form

• Registering and responding via our online consultation system (this is the most effi cient way of responding to the consultation and we encourage you to use this method)

• Or send in a letter using the address details above or an e-mail to Planning.policy@southoxon.gov.uk

Please be advised that all responses that we receive will be available to the public to view. Comments regarding housing allocations made prior to March 2014 will not be considered.

What happens next?Your comments will help us draft the next stage of our plan. Once this has been carried out another round of public consultation will then take place near the end of the year.

You can keep up-to-date with our progress by visiting our website. The consultation closes on 2 April 2015.

Employment and EconomyWe know that we need to plan for an additional 5 hectares of employment land to 2031 to support our economy.

Our evidence study and your responses to our fi rst consultation suggest the following locations may be suitable for the additional employment land:• Monument Business Park, Chalgrove • Culham Science Centre, subject to further road

improvements• The area around Didcot Station

Transport and the Green BeltWe are continuing to investigate transport and the Green Belt, and we don’t have specifi c questions to ask on these issues - we will return to them in the next consultation. You can use the ‘additional comments’ section of the response form if there are points you wish to raise at this time.

What’s happening? Since April 2014 we have been preparing a new local plan, known as the Local Plan 2031. This is to identify the most positive way to plan for additional growth identifi ed in a new housing study called the Strategic Housing Market Assessment (or SHMA). Preparing a new Local Plan now will ensure that we remain in control of where new development takes place.

The Local Plan 2031 will set out a strategy for delivering sustainable growth in South Oxfordshire, identify appropriate areas and sites for development, along with the necessary infrastructure to support this growth. The plan will also set out policies that will be used for determining planning applications.

We’ve provided this additional period of consultation to allow an opportunity to further capture your views at this early plan shaping stage.

What have we done so far?During June and July 2014 we held our fi rst round of public consultation, which considered the issues and scope of our new plan. As this consultation was a blank canvas, we suggested eight different ways in which we could plan for the additional housing growth and asked for your comments and other suggestions. It also contained questions on the location of jobs and the improvement of transport, infrastructure, shopping and community facilities.

We have also commissioned a range of studies in order to collect evidence and information to help us prepare our new Local Plan. Completed studies are available on our website.

What you’ve saidWe received over a thousand comments to our consultation, which have helped us refi ne our housing distribution options, along with key issues the plan should focus on. The consultation document and a detailed summary of the responses we received is set out in our ‘Issues & Scope Consultation Report’ which can be found on our website.

How many additional homes should weplan for?The SHMA identifi ed a need for South Oxfordshire to plan for between 14,500 and 16,500 homes from 2011 to 2031. We have already made provision for around 11,400 homes

through allocations in our Core Strategy (our existing plan) and more recent planning permissions and commitments. We therefore need to plan for between 3,100 and 5,100 additional new homes between now and 2031.

We believe that planning for around an additional 3,600 homes will provide the extra housing needed to support our plans for economic growth. This could leave a small shortfall in affordable housing which we will look to address in other ways.

and villages. It would be more appropriate for this development to be well located to access Oxford city in sustainable ways, like using public transport. We should also consider ‘ring-fencing’ this additional development in our plan.

For these reasons, a single location or limited number of sites would be more appropriate. Possible approaches could be:1. An urban extension to the edge of Oxford2. A new settlement 3. Extensions to existing settlements (see map inside this leafl et)Starting point: Population and household projections

Consider case for adjustments to refl ect local circumstances

Conclusion: Overall need for housing

Assessment of our need

To address past under-provision

or improve affordability

To deliver affordable

homes needed

To support expected

growth in jobs

Oxford’s unmet needOxford City Council has indicated that they would have diffi culties in meeting their identifi ed housing need entirely within the city boundary and that the other districts across the county could be asked to consider taking some of this “unmet need”. We are working with all the Oxfordshire councils to identify the scale of this unmet need.

We will have to consider how planning for any extra housing arising from Oxford fi ts with the growth strategy for our own identifi ed need. For the purposes of this consultation we would like you to consider that this could be an additional 3,000 new homes, above the 3,600 required to meet our own need. The work looking at the unmet need will continue until the autumn, and until then we think that 3,000 additional homes is a reasonable starting point based on dividing unmet need between the other districts.

If this further growth was distributed in the same way as our own additional need it is likely to begin to fundamentally change the character of the district’s towns

Where should the new housing go?In response to the ‘issues and scope’ consultation you told us that you supported the approach of the Core Strategy as well as focusing some of the housing growth in the Science Vale area and more sustainable settlements. However, none of the scenarios set out in the ‘issues and scope’ consultation provided the whole answer. Instead the answer will be a combination of these options.

Using your helpful feedback and the latest evidence and guidance, we’ve developed a refined set of options. The map gives an indication of the broad areas we are looking at across the district. We think the bulk of the additional new homes should be focused in the Science Vale area and an incremental increase in the market towns and larger villages. We are also considering a more flexible approach to new housing in our smaller villages. We want to know how you think the additional housing could be shared between these areas.

Science Vale: Science Vale is an international location for science and technology businesses (see map) and we want this story of economic success to continue.

We are working with Vale of White Horse District Council on a Science Vale Area Action Plan (AAP). This plan will seek to ensure that the economic development opportunities at Harwell, Milton Park and Culham Science Centre are delivered by planning comprehensively for this area. You can find out more at www.southoxon.gov.uk/sciencevale or your local library.

South Oxfordshire LOCAL PLAN 2031 REFINED OPTIONS FEBRUARY 2015

Market towns and Larger Villages: Our market towns and larger villages play an important part in providing jobs and services locally, and may be able to support an additional allocation of housing. This would help to ensure that they remain viable and vibrant service centres for the district’s residents.

Smaller villages: We want to continue to protect what is special about our smaller villages but also to support an appropriate scale of development that would help meet local need and demand for housing, especially where the local community think it is desirable. There are two ways in which we can encourage small-scale growth in our smaller villages. 1. Allowing communities in our smaller villages to identify

housing sites in neighbourhood plans.2. Being more flexible in our policies about the definition

of small-scale and where small-scale development is allowed. We’d like to know what you think about how we can

strike the right balance between the different places in South Oxfordshire when it comes to deciding where best to plan new housing. Sadly there is not enough space here to provide the full details of our approach, but we’ve tried to provide a summary. We suggest that you view our full consultation document online or at your local library.

Larger Villages – Core Strategy allocations:Our existing strategy seeks to enhance the vitality of towns and larger villages by allowing for a proportion of housing and employment growth. The Core Strategy allocated 1154 homes to be built in larger villages which has been divided between the larger villages based on the existing size of each village (except Wheatley where the Green Belt forms a strong constraint).

A number of these larger villages have chosen to prepare neighbourhood plans which will identify the sites where new homes will be built.

In the larger villages of Benson, Cholsey, Chinnor, Crowmarsh Gifford, Goring and Nettlebed (which are not preparing neighbourhood plans) we have been working with the local communities to identify appropriate sites for the housing requirements from our Core Strategy. More information on the work undertaken so far is provided in our full consultation document. Please bear in mind that these are just allocations from our Core Strategy, and we will have to consider how some of the additional housing need could be met in the Larger Villages.

Providing for Travelling Communities As with the housed community, we have a statutory responsibility to assess and plan for travellers’ needs. By maintaining a supply of new authorised caravan pitches to meet the identified needs arising from our travelling communities, we are in a stronger position to resist unauthorised sites and encampments and the associated issues these can bring.

We need to find suitable sites for 24 traveller caravan pitches. To date, this has proved difficult so in order to find suitable sites for our travelling community we are taking a more flexible and pragmatic approach.

Possible approaches could include making temporary authorised sites permanent, extending or intensifying existing authorised sites, or identifying new sites on brownfield land. The consultation document provides more information on how we might do this.

Our town centresAll of our town centres have continued to perform well despite ongoing changes in shopping patterns and the retail sector. Results from our recent assessment show a need for some extra shops driven by the excellent town centre performance across the district. We believe that this is best directed to Didcot where there are clear site opportunities.