‘The Word Growth Scares People’ – is the Oxfordshire 2050 Plan Effectively Dead?

Although the Conservatives lost overall control in the May 2021 Oxfordshire Lections they had already lost control of the Growth Board in 2019 given that it comprises chairs of the LPAs, only 2 of the 5 being labour

Oxford Mail 2019

THE new Lib Dem leader of the Oxfordshire Growth Board has revealed that members have agreed to review its name and responsibilities.

Sue Cooper has warned the body, which channels government funding, that the word ‘growth’ scares people.

Mrs Cooper, who took the chairmanship after being elected leader of South Oxfordshire District Council in May, said members had agreed to look at how it works this summer ahead of possible changes in September.

The same leader who tried to scupper her own local plan.

The Growth Deal required local plans meeting 100k to be submitted in 2019 and an Oxfordshire Plan to 2050 by 2021. Well more than twice the housing will be twice as scary.

The government made it clear the 2021 target would be broken and withdrew the three year supply concession in the plan. Slightly irrelevant as all 5 authorities now have statutory plans. The deal is history. Can you really see the Lib Dems, whose Southern Startegy now is to Out Nimby the Greens, supporting an extra 100,000 plus homes when sites of several thousand were too much for them? The governance arrangements were not statutory and required unanimity. The plan is dead.