Just when you thought it couldn't get any worse for Planning....

Here’s my two penn’orth on the end of the Oxfordshire Plan 2050.

Despite his recent sacking, Michael Gove’s toilet flush gesture in February 2022 - an apparent response to a colleague’s question about the future of the Arc - has come good for the Oxfordshire Plan 2050.

A statement released yesterday (3rd August 2022) confirmed that the Oxfordshire Plan’s preparation has been abandoned as the five LPAs were unable to reach agreement on the approach to planning for future housing needs. In short, the overall number of homes, its apportionment within the five authorities, and the identification of strategic locations for growth. Once again, it is the provision of new housing which is the major stumbling block.

This news will have come as little surprise to those active in Oxfordshire, and may feel reminiscent of the infamous Growth Board meeting in September 2016 when Councillor John Cotton, the then Leader of South Oxfordshire, was unwilling to agree to the proposed appointment of Oxford City’s unmet housing need. That was just the start of a long bumpy road ahead.

Roll on a year or so and the Oxfordshire Housing and Growth Deal was confirmed in November 2017, and signed soon after in March 2018. There were carrots in the form of the (3 year) housing land supply WMS, notwithstanding the warnings from Barton Willmore and others that this would have adverse impacts for plan preparation and maintaining housing land supply; and sticks, such as Robert Jenrick’s intervention in production of the South Oxfordshire Local Plan (oh, the memories).

?The Deal included some bold commitments from the Oxfordshire authorities, notably the delivery of 100,000 homes (2011-2031) – OK, yes, most of which was already secured through three out of five adopted or near adopted local plans - and the adoption of the Oxfordshire Plan AKA the Joint Statutory Spatial Plan (JSSP) by March 2021. The Government’s headline ‘quid pro quo’ was ￡215m of central funding, the majority of which is to fund infrastructure. The funding is committed to projects which are to support growth up to 2031 so is secured, albeit subject to the delivery of the 100,000 homes.

In 2018, any sense that the Deal was going to neutralise the local political challenges in delivering the Deal quickly evaporated with the introduction of the Government’s new standard method. Surprisingly, this resulted in a substantial reduction in the calculation of housing need in Oxfordshire, from around 5,000 dpa to around 3,200 dpa. In large part, this lit the fuse for the outcome of the 2019 local elections in which the Conservatives lost control of South Oxfordshire and the Vale of White Horse to the Lib Dems.

With a change of name, the Oxfordshire Growth Board became the Future Oxfordshire Partnership, and the continued 3 year housing supply protection, seemingly the Oxfordshire Plan would limp on. This sense was bolstered with the Government announcing that its dedicated team for the Arc would prepare a Spatial Framework. This could have provided some much needed ‘cloud-cover’ for the difficult decisions that need to be taken to finalise the Oxfordshire Plan; decisions that were being put off for as long as possible.

?Following the consultations on the Oxfordshire Plan Regulation 18 Part 2 and the Spatial Framework Vision, all went alarmingly quite. Worse, in December 2021, Vale of White Horse District Council completed a self-certified five year review of its Part 1 Local Plan which resulted in this authority switching to its much lower standard method housing figure, which simultaneously resolved its five year housing supply shortfall.

?Local elections in May 2022 meant that all talk of the Arc, housing, growth, anything remotely contentious, was embargoed. A few months later and a change of Secretary of State – not before disbanding the Arc team within DLUHC - and the Government's Planning Reform agenda which, 2 years on from the ‘Planning for the Future’ White Paper, remains uncertain.

?So where does this leave those promoting development, particularly housing, in Oxfordshire?

Much will depend on whether the Government introduces a new standard method in the foreseeable future which increases local housing need in Oxfordshire. Ideally, to a level akin to the higher need figures in the 2014 SHMA and the 2021 OGNA (5,000 dpa approx.). This single act by the Government would go a long way to mitigate the damage which yesterday’s announcement could cause to housing delivery in Oxfordshire. This increased local housing need should incentivise the Oxfordshire LPAs to maintain plan-led delivery and to ensure that plans are kept up-to-date.

In the absence of this action from DLUHC and its new Secretary of State, there is a risk that the Oxfordshire LPAs, like Vale, each crawl towards their plans being five years old and switch to a low housing need figure. At that point, it remains to be seen whether or not there is then any incentive to produce a new local plan . Regrettably, slowing worsening housing affordability in the least affordable area in the country is not enough.

Surely the Government must agree that such an outcome would not be in anyone’s interests, not least with the Bank of England’s stark warning today that the UK will go into recession by the end of 2022. Even if the Arc is dead, areas like Oxfordshire are vital to keep the national economy’s heart beating.

Please get in touch with me or colleagues at Barton Willmore now Stantec if you wish to discuss this further or have any questions about the impact of this announcement for the promotion of your site(s).