Residents are worried that Oxford City Council is using “questionable shortcuts” in developing its new local plan, after the previous local plan was rejected by the Planning Inspectorate.
A group of protestors gathered outside the town hall on Wednesday evening (January 22), just before the city council cabinet meeting began, holding posters that read: “No Shortcuts with Oxford’s Local Plan” and “We demand democracy”.
Cabinet members voted to withdraw the Local Plan 2040 and agree to the Local Development Scheme 2025-30, which sets out the work programme and timescales for consulting on the revised local plan.
The new scheme sets out an “ambitious but relatively quick timeline” for the 2042 Local Plan, which involves repeating the consultations for the previous local plan, but only consulting residents on “a few issues that need amending and updating” and using the data they already have from the recent consultation.
The protestors said that the shortened consultation would “erode” their democratic rights, and that the decision on the Local Development Scheme should not be agreed by the cabinet that evening and should instead be decided by the entire council.
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Evelyn Sanderson, who represented Only One Oxford, a campaign group that advocates for a balance between providing affordable homes and maintaining green spaces, said: “We’re standing here on the steps to raise awareness that this is going on and that our democratic rights have been eroded.
“The Local Development Scheme is really short, and it doesn’t follow the usual protocol that is followed by previous plans and is being followed within the county and elsewhere in the UK.
“It omits the issues consultation, which allows people to broadly give their views, and goes straight to the preferred options consultation, which narrows down the choice.
“We would like our locally elected representatives to ensure that people in the city have a voice, and that it is not undermined by shortening the length and omitting the most inclusive element of the consultation."
At the meeting, councillor Louise Upton, cabinet member for planning, said that while the council “profoundly disagree” with the Planning Inspectorates’ decision, withdrawing the plan was “the only sensible option”.
“Nonetheless it is a chance to review and update it.”
After the meeting, she added: "Going through the consultations again means a delay for us getting on with implementing the brilliant new policies we have, like insisting all new buildings be zero carbon in operation, so we want to shorten the overall period as much as possible.
"It will still be about a year though, with the usual opportunities for input from the public in the two rounds of consultation, exactly as usual."
Leader of the city council, Susan Brown said: “We need to make sure we get the right plans and policies in place as quickly as possible, so that we can make sure decisions are being made in the right way, and that policies that have been democratically put forward, consulted on and engaged with.”
She added that they wanted to avoid a situation where developers have “some sort of free-for-all.”
“It sets out what we will be working on and the key milestones in the development of those documents.
“In particular, it shows when we intend to undertake public engagement.
“We will undertake public engagement to meet the full requirements of the Regulations.”
In September, the Planning Inspectorate recommended that the Local Plan 2040 should be withdrawn, on the grounds that there were technical issues with the council’s assessment of the number of homes needed, and that they had failed to meaningfully engage with neighbouring districts.
The cabinet’s decision to withdraw the previous Local Plan will need to be ratified at the full council meeting next Monday, January 27.
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About the author
Esme is a Local Democracy Reporter covering politics, planning and council meetings across the county.
She joined the Oxford Mail in October 2024 after completing a Master's in Journalism at the University of Sheffield.
Esme achieved a BA in History at Cambridge University before going down the journalism path.
She can be found on X by searching @esme_kenney.
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