Oxford City Council has published the first draft of its Oxford Local Plan 2040.
The plan aims to build more affordable homes, tackle the climate emergency and make Oxford’s economy work for all residents.
The draft Local Plan’s proposed policies include:
- requiring all new homes and businesses to be net zero carbon in operation
- requiring all major developments to plant more trees, hedges and other greenery to meet new minimum standards
- requiring developments of 10 or more homes to provide at least 40% as affordable housing
- allowing homes to be built on all employment sites for the first time
- requiring large developments to establish and deliver a plan to employ local people and deliver affordable workspaces
The Local Plan also identifies sites where 9,612 new homes will be built across Oxford by 2040 to help tackle the city’s housing crisis.
If agreed, the Local Plan will become the legal document that underpins decision-making on all planning applications in Oxford. It will replace the existing Oxford Local Plan 2036.
The City Council consulted Oxford residents and organisations last year and used the comments from 1,730 respondents across two consultation rounds to draft the new document. We have considered the feedback and produced a consultation report. The report contains an overview of our consultation stages till date with summaries of the received representations and our responses to specific points as required. The report also indicates where changes to the content of the plan are proposed in response to the received feedback.
The Report is available to view on the ‘Have your say’ page.
Submission of Local Plan
The draft Local Plan 2040 was submitted to the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Communities and Housing on 28 March 2024, which marks the beginning of the public examination. The Secretary of State will appoint an independent Inspector in due course to conduct the Examination. The role of the Inspector is to consider the Local Plan and Proposals Map, and determine whether they are sound, legally compliant and fulfils the duty to co-operate.
The process is managed by the Planning Inspectorate (PINS), and timetabling will be outside of our control. Further information will be posted on our webpages as details are confirmed. The Council will also appoint a Programme Officer, who will serve as the main point of contact during the Examination.
The submitted documents include the following:
- Submission draft of the Local Plan,
- a copy of all representations received during the Regulation 19 consultation,
- a schedule of proposed modifications to the Plan,
- the evidence base and other supporting documents
All information associated with both the submission and the public examination itself can be found on the Local Plan Examination page.
Next Steps
We anticipate the timescales for the next stages to roughly be as follows:
Examination: Autumn / Winter 2024 (dependent on Planning Inspectorate)
Adoption: possibly Summer 2025
The full detail of our timetable for developing the new Local Plan is set out in the Local Development Scheme (LDS).
