The Oxfordshire Growth Deal and Local Plans – Too Many or Far too Few Homes

One of the sillier grounds for challenge for the Cherwell and South Oxfordshire local plans is that the Oxfordshire Growth deal figures they embody are too high. This is nonsense as:

1. The growth deals runs 2011-2031, only 10 years, local plans with new settlements will have to run for 30 years
2. It embodies the old standard method, now frozen in time in the new one, and so therefore includes a ‘cap’ and takes no account of jobs led growth or correcting the jobs/housing imbalance leading to increased commuting
3. As only based on the standard method it takes no account at all of overspill from land constrained areas, as the original arc report did. Therefore not one extra ‘arc’ home is proposed for the above two reasons.
4. It doesn’t include the updated 2018 HH formation figures because the government has said don’t include them. They are suppressed because households don’t form if there are no houses for them to form into.
5. This is the first wave of growth for Oxford since the 1930s. Why should Oxford be different from any other town and force people working there to drive dozens of miles to get to work. It would be planned sprawl and contrary to all of the governments climate commitments.
6. It is an argument lost at every Oxfordshire examination.