Category Archives: Uncategorized

Life after Oxfordshire Plan 2050

Earlier this month, the five local authorities in Oxfordshire announced they were unable to agree the way forward for determining housing numbers in the Oxfordshire Plan 2050, and that work on the Plan would therefore end. That was disappointing to those of us who had worked for so long to make it a success.

In the aftermath of that decision, people are wondering what comes next. Here’s a short list:

  • Vale’s work is now focused on our emerging Joint Local Plan (joint with SODC). Where before, we were waiting for OxPlan50 to inform our housing need numbers, we will now do that work for ourselves. that work is underway.
  • The most recent OxPlan50 consultation, which finished in October 2021, told us that the public valued a lot of the policies being mooted for that plan, especially the environmental policies, and more especially, those to do with sustainable construction and transport. We can use them, and the evidence gathered so far, in our Joint Local Plan.
  • One really great thing about the OxPlan50 was the vision, which each council approved. We will be going ahead with our plan, and take into account that Vision. (See the whole Vision for sustainable Oxfordshire in my DropBox here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/arigeo06o6zygdt/Oxfordshire%20Plan%20Vision.pdf?dl=0)

Here’s a summary of the Strategic Vision for Oxfordshire: 

  • All of the housing we committed to in our Local Plan 2031 is still going forward, including the 2200 we agreed to provide to help meet Oxford’s housing needs (that they are unable to provide on their own).

Personally, I am determined to do all I can to make this emerging Joint Local Plan all that we need it to be for our districts for the next 20 years: the right numbers of the right types of net-zero carbon houses in the right sustainable places, the jobs and employment locations that ensure this area’s economic health, and whatever else we can do to look after our residents’ and workers’ well-being.

 

Historical housing delivery in Oxfordshire

In recent month, everyone’s been talking about how many houses we’re going to need to build in Oxfordshire between now and 2050. Now that the OxPlan50 project has stopped, the work to determine those needs reverts to the 5 local planning authorities: Cherwell, Oxford City, South Oxfordshire, Vale of white Horse, West Oxfordshire.

I explored the councils historical housing delivery numbers. I took a look at the ten years to see how housing delivery is going in the local authorities. Figures are from the published Authority Monitoring reports.

Since about 2016, local authorities have been delivering to a very high housing figure, which was derived from the Strategic Housing Marketing assessment (SHMA) that came forward as part of the Oxfordshire Growth Deal. That deal required ambitious growth targets beyond anything ever seen here before.

Cherwell

Oxford City

South Oxfordshire

Vale of White Horse

West Oxfordshire

Back into blogging!

I used to post here on my blog a lot; when I was an opposition councillor I had a lot to oppose!

I discovered in May 2019, when we won control of Vale, and I was appointed to Cabinet, life was too busy and I was too full of new responsibilities to find time to blog. Also, I needed to find the boundary between things that are confidential and things I could blog about. I feel I’m there (after three years I should hope so!)

My intention is a weekly or fortnightly blog post to tell you about something of interest that I’ve encountered.

 

My letter to Planning Committee re: West Way 30 flats

Here’s the letter I sent to members of the planning committee before their meeting on 2nd Dec 2020 to consider the West Way application for 30 extra flats, none affordable, and with no parking provision.

Dear colleagues, 

I’m emailing the members and substitutes of the Planning Committee, mostly due to my doubt that I can fit my message into the time I’m allowed in the meeting. 
There are a couple of good reasons to refuse this application: 

First, this is over development of the site, in terms of both number of storeys and density. The proposal is non-compliant with the Botley SPD  (part of Vale’s development plan), which limits any building height to 8 storeys. I see that West Way Community Concern has comprehensively covered that topic in their note to you. For convenience, I’ve attached it here.

Second, this application is non-compliant with our affordable housing policy. Core Policy 24 requires 35% affordable housing on all developments over 10 dwellings. This application is for 30 units, so policy compliance would be 35% of that, or 10.5 affordable units. Policy allows a monetary payment in lieu of a fractional amount. So, to be policy compliant, the applicant would provide 10 affordable units plus a financial contribution (for the .5 united of the 10.5 required) to affordable housing elsewhere in the district. 
There is already permitted consent on this site for 120 flats with zero affordable units. The developer previously agreed to pay £2m in lieu of the expected 42 onsite units, which gives a value per affordable-unit-not-provided-on-site of about £48k. So if the developer were to negotiate a similar obligation for this application, £48K for 10.5 units would be £500,000 as a payment in lieu of onsite units. But there is nothing on offer here.  

Those two material considerations should be enough for you to vote to refuse. 

However, if you are still minded to approve it: 
Please require the following conditions: 

  1. All residential units, student rooms and hotel rooms are intended to be car-free. In the permitted application, the developer recognised that this would likely be problematic for the local area, so they agreed to provide funding for a Controlled Parking Zone in nearby roads. Adding 30 more flats would surely lead to a greater need for funding for a wider area of CPZ. 
  2. Cycle parking does not meet County’s current standards, as you’ve read in the officer’s report. Officers concluded that since the permitted application doesn’t have the required number of cycle parking spaces, it was fair to not require it for this application either. I urge you to add a condition that there will be safe and secure cycle parking provision to County’s current standard for all the residences to be built under this permission.

And finally, in reading the officer’s report, I had these questions…

  1. CCG asked for s106 monies. Do you understand the reasons why it isn’t getting any for the GP surgery? 
  2. Leisure asked for s106 money. Do you understand the reasons for not giving any to local leisure facilities? 
  3. Do you understand where the hundreds of residents in this development can go to find open green space amenity? Is that OK in your view?
  4. The registered providers don’t feel these flats are suitable for family living. Do you disagree or agree with that?

I hope you vote to refuse. If you refuse, the applicant still has permission for the 120 original market flats with no parking and inadequate cycle parking. The Botley community doesn’t want to have a worse deal than they have now.

Thanks for listening. See you at the meeting.  

Regards, 

Debby

Committee voted to refuse the application for reasons of parking, mass and density and lack of affordable housing.

What’s wrong with the Planning for the Future White paper?

We all agree — the country needs more houses that people can afford.

Government thinks that the solution is to build more houses faster. They think the main impediment to this is the slow speed of the current planning system. So they are proposing changes to take away some of the local decision making. One of their previous ideas was to allow disused office space to be turned into housing without need for planning permission. That led to greedy developers across the country producing tiny box-like flats where people are crammed into spaces with no windows. Govt recently changed its mind and now requires habitable space to have natural light. The planning system adds value; it makes spaces liveable for human beings.

Let’s look at the problem in a systematic way. In any system, when you don’t get the outcome you expect, you can assess three things:

  1. Make sure you are doing things right. Govt says local planning authorities aren’t giving permissions fast enough. This assumes faster movement through the planning system will bring more houses that people can afford.
  2. Make sure you are doing the right things. Govt says there should be more schemes allowed under permitted development, assuming that if developers have a free hand in what they build, unencumbered by the local planning authorities’ processes, there will be more houses that people can afford.
  3. How do we decide what is right? Make sure you are aiming at the right thing. Govt thinks that developers are the answer to the problem of not enough houses that people can afford.

I think Govt is aiming at the wrong target.

Developers are in the business of making as much profit as possible though the houses they sell. That’s OK; it’s what they do.

  • Our objective in Vale is to provide more houses that people can afford. We have a policy that requires a percentage of each major development to be ‘affordable’. (The Govt definition of ‘affordable’ is a house available at 80% or less of market price. In Vale, that still isn’t affordable to a person on a median income, so even the best intentioned policy is ineffective. Today we must think in terms of ‘houses that people can afford’.) But developers claim the policy lessens their profits. They’re right; it does.
  • So developers sit on permitted plans, because they know land values and therefore house prices will continue to rise, and they will build their houses when the profits are high.

I’m not distracted by the harm that is forecast to come from the various proposals in Govt’s Planning for the Future. (But there is a lot of harm.) I’m focussed on how the overall proposed solution doesn’t solve the problem.

Government thinks that the reason we don’t have enough affordable houses is that developers don’t get planning permission fast enough to build the number of houses we need for prices to come down to an affordable level. However, I think that expecting profit-hungry developers to solve our problem of a shortage of affordable housing on ever increasing land value is doomed to fail because it’s the wrong solution.  

It’s the wrong solution. It makes no sense to say that the way to provide more houses that people can afford is to rely on for-profit developers to provide them for us.

My speech to my motion on LPP2

At the Vale full council meeting on 17 July 2019, I tabled a motion about the problems with LPP2. You can read it here.

Vale has a duty to cooperate with our neighbouring councils. In our Local Plan, this shows up as Vale’s commitment to take on a portion of Oxford’s Objectively Assessed Need that they are unable to meet for themselves. That’s completely reasonable.

What isn’t reasonable is for us to have to commit to exact numbers of houses to help meet Oxford’s unmet need, BEFORE that need has been established by examination and adoption of their Local Plan.

Instead, our Inspector accepted the unmet housing need figures the Growth Board came up with, and said that the 2200 houses for Vale are a ‘working assumption’ and should be revisited once Oxford’s need is established. The inspector was silent on how we should do that. But it really matters, because once this LPP2 is adopted, the allocated sites will come forward in planning applications, and these Green Belt sites will be gone forever.

Letters to the Inspectors and the Inspectorate have argued that Oxford’s need must be determined prior to allocating sites in the Green Belt land for houses to meet Oxford’s need. Replies have been illogical. Cherwell’s inspector says that’s just the way planning works; examinations are scheduled when they come forward. The inspectorate says each local plan is handled independently; there’s no higher view for planning these hearings.

But the Local Plans aren’t independent. Cooperation requires sensible ways of working. We need to determine the need before adopting a radical plan to meet that need. That hasn’t been done.

In order to remove land from the Green Belt, there must be exceptional circumstances (beyond just a need for housing). Consider that the inspector of Vale’s LPP2 said that Oxford’s need for 2200 ‘mostly social rent houses’ was the exceptional circumstance. I’m shocked at the lack of rational thinking that demonstrates. How can that be the exceptional circumstances for such a serious decision, when the actual need hasn’t yet been established?  

Council needs advice from the Minister as to how he envisions this working out. If, as is expected, Oxford’s need is drastically reduced with a recalculation, it could well be that we need do nothing to help – that our Local Plan Part 1 had enough houses located close to Oxford to meet their unmet need. But we cannot know that until Oxford’s evidence and their own ability to deliver the housing they need is assessed.

Why are conservatives concreting everything?

I posted this Comment in a thread on Facebook where people want to save the open spaces yet build enough houses, but not the way the Tories are doing it.

Looking at it, I think it sums up tomorrow’s election.

“I declare an interest. I am a Lib Dem member for Vale of White Horse, and a candidate again tomorrow.

I’m not corrupt, not lining my pockets (I honestly don’t know where you get the idea that we’re getting rich at this!); my council allowance is about £400 per month.

I’m a Remainer and have spent the last 8 years actively working to keep development out of the Green Belt. I respond in all Local Plan consultations. I challenge every Green Belt development decision that crosses my desk. I chair the joint scrutiny committee for SODC and Vale and challenge everything the Tories do.

In my view the main difference been Tories and Lib Dems In Local Government is that Tories focus is on economic growth and Lib Dems focus on our quality of life. Of course it’s not black and white, but more often than not it’s this difference that shows up. Tories help the wealthy build wealth because they think that builds jobs for the rest of us to earn a salary and thus get by.

I think that we need to make the world a better place to live In. Decent housing, public transport, environmental protections. A helping hand for when help is needed.

So the Govt Growth Deal came along and required 100,000 houses. I voted against it. Many of my Lib Dem colleagues abstained. The 100,000 is basically what was already promised in the various Local Plans, so it wasn’t any sort of escalation. But it was already too many, in my opinion. We don’t have the roads, public transport infrastructure, schools, doctors surgeries and hospital beds for the forecast growth.

I think that’s a Tory failure. Get the Lib Dem’s into power and see what we can do. Just a thought. Same old same old, or try something new?

The Brexit Bribe

The Brexit Bribe announced by our PM today is £1.6bn over 7 years to be given to areas that voted Leave. Is that about £222 million per year?

So which constituencies voted Leave? What? We don’t have data by constituency? Why ever not? Well, let’s guess about 50% or 325 constituencies.

So then divvie the bribe by 325 constituencies and you have £683k per constituency per year for 7 years. A constituency has about £75k people. So what does this mean?

£683k divvied by 75k people is about £9 per person per year. So if an area voted Leave because (well, inequality), then the Tory Govt will give about £9 per head per year to each of those areas.

My area (Oxford) gets nothing. Nor would London. Even the most deprived areas get nothing. I hear Brokenshaw talk about jobs creation. I thought employment was the highest ever? We need funding for NHS, schools, and housing. How does this bribe help that?

The Tory way of responding to climate change

Actions vs words. Tory-run Vale of White Horse has a webpage with info on their commitment to climate change. Last updated 2014, it refers to their 2008 strategy. Clearly there’s been a lack of political will since then. Vote Liberal Democrat for real change.

To see the whole webpage: http://www.whitehorsedc.gov.uk/services-and-advice/environment/climate-change/tackling-climate-change/councils-commitment-climate-c