Help to Plan the Future of Our Villages!
Oxford County Council are starting to plan for 2030-50.
They want our views.
Your Parish Council is holding six consultation sessions.
Six opportunities to have your say.
Please drop by!
Where: The Ashbury Village Shop
When: Tuesday 14 September, 1000-1400
Thursday 16 September, 1000-1400
Saturday 18 September, 1000-1400
Ashbury Parish Council
06 September 2021
Oxfordshire 20250
On 28 July 2021 at 6PM, members of the Ashbury Neighbourhood Plan Group gathered at Ashbury Manor to discuss the forthcoming consultation formally entitled “Oxfordshire 2050 (Reg 18 Part 2)”. (Present: Yoshi Nishio, chairman, Christopher Prentice, Pauline Smith, Peter Cowx. Apologies received from Julia Blake, Peter Challen Smith).
The Oxfordshire 2050 Plan will define the development strategy for the whole county for the next three decades. As a Joint Statutory Spatial Plan, it is being prepared by all four District Councils (including our Vale of White Horse DC), Oxford City Council and Oxfordshire County Council, working together as the Oxfordshire Growth Board. It will shape the very nature of Oxfordshire for the next generation, setting targets and locations for growth as well as a raft of policies. It will be of particular significance since existing district local plans will no longer identify their area’s housing and development targets – these will instead be drawn from the Oxfordshire 2050 Plan.
The meeting discussed different ways in which the Group could most easily collect and distil the views of residents. While we have neither the time nor the resources to conduct an in depth exercise of the scale carried out for the drafting of the Ashbury Neighbourhood Plan in 2018, nonetheless we have been able to put that experience to great use in designing a procedure for this time. Accordingly, we will be holding open workshops where residents will have the opportunity to discuss and ask about the Plan one on one with a member of the Group. The sessions will take place in the Cafe of the shop, between 10.00AM and 2.00PM, on three days this coming week Tuesday (14th), Thursday (16th) and Saturday (18th).
In addition, the Group will be engaging with the children in our Parish who, after all, are the ones whose lives are going to be most affected by policies in 2050. Under the leadership of Pauline Smith and with the assistance of Kate Watkins, the Group is hoping to include a discussion of this consultation into lessons and other activities at Ashbury Primary School, to find out directly what the children’s hopes and aspirations are for the place they call home. And finally, the Group has determined that this would be an ideal opportunity for the Parish Council to enhance its presence on social media, and will be supporting the Chairman and others in their efforts to publicise the Plan and engage with parish residents about it through electronic means.
The NPG welcomes this very sensible initiative, attempting as it does to form a coherent, joined up approach to shaping our community. Broadly, the Plan seeks to address five themes: climate change, environmental quality, strong & healthy communities, sustainable travel and connectivity and creating jobs and providing homes. Copies of the consultation document are available online and at the Ashbury shop. The public consultation on the Plan runs until October 8 2021. The NPG will be formulating the Parish’s official response to the Plan based on input from residents but we strongly encourage everyone to send in their own comments directly as well.
Yoshi Nishio
Chairman | Neighbourhood Plan Group | Ashbury Parish Council
planning@ashbury.org.uk
2020 9202 OMWLP – Draft Plan Parish Consultation Letter (3)
Minerals and wastes plan
20190220 The Oxfordshire Plan 2050: Vision & Objectives Consultation
If you want a say on what our County will be like for future generations, please act now!
The Oxfordshire Growth Board is currently consulting, until 25 March, on the Oxfordshire Plan 2050 (the Oxfordshire Joint Statutory Spatial Plan). This will set out the development framework for the county for the next generation.
At this stage, the consultation is on the Vision and Objectives, and does not include specific targets. However, we believe the underlying assumptions must be challenged now, otherwise the Plan will be fundamentally flawed
Our question is – Who is the plan for?
It takes as read the 100,000 houses our Local Councils have already signed up to deliver by the mid-2030s (in exchange for £215 million from the Government) – a 40% growth in housing stock. Although not spelt out in the Plan, after 2031, the Oxford-Cambridge growth corridor proposals envisage another 250,000 or so houses – doubling Oxfordshire’s housing stock and population by 2050.
The inevitable conclusion is that this is not a plan for us – Oxfordshire residents of a rural county – but a plan for developers and big business.
The countryside is not just a ‘nice to have’ – it is a social good in its own right, providing food, water, clean air and more, and vital to our physical and mental well-being.
This shouldn’t be about how much development we can cram in over the next 30 years.
It should be about what Oxfordshire actually needs and how that can best be accommodated over time, within its social and environmental limits.
This plan should be led by the needs of existing Oxfordshire residents and their families, working to ensure that anyone living in Oxfordshire in 2050 can still experience and enjoy the rural character of the county that exists today
We hope that you will take the time to read CPRE Oxfordshire’s detailed commentary on the consultation document, which sets out our concerns, and our ambitions in far more detail. We would be happy to discuss these with you in more detail, as required.
TO FIND OUT MORE & RESPOND
The Oxfordshire Plan 2050: Vision & Objectives Consultation
20190222 CPRE Oxfordshire
CPRE Oxfordshire’s detailed commentary on the Oxfordshire Plan 2050 Vision document is available on our website here:
http://www.cpreoxon.org.uk/news/current-news/item/2740-the-oxfordshire-plan-2050-who-s-it-for
20190222 Oxfordshire Plan
To see the Oxfordshire Plan 2050 Vision document and to register your comments by 25 March.