My latest contribution to the Oxford Mail's The Issue column...
I have written in these pages many times before about the need to build new homes in Oxfordshire and the difficulty of balancing the incredibly high numbers that our county is burdened with whilst preserving the fantastic and varied character of the numerous communities affected by housing growth. The latest challenge on this front come from Oxford City who claim that they simply cannot accommodate their own housing need within the city boundary. The Vale of White Horse, along with every other Council in Oxfordshire has been working with Oxford City to establish the amount of housing that may need to be located outside the City itself and where best to locate it. That work continues and will be closely scrutinised by all concerned. Most reasonable people would accept that Oxford is unlikely to be able to deliver the minimum 24,000 new homes required of it by 2031, what is unclear however is how many they can deliver. The Vale has therefore taken the additional step of publicly acknowledging the Council has a legal obligation to cooperate with Oxford City in order to try to help them meet their housing target. The Vale District Council has and will continue to press the City Council to provide robust evidence to demonstrate they have left no stone unturned in seeking to address their own housing target before looking to their neighbours to assist. This will mean some difficult and uncomfortable choices for those in the City, but they are no more than others have already been through in the Vale and other districts to deal with the housing pressures that we already face. The Vale continues to work jointly with other councils through the Oxfordshire Growth Board to resolve Oxfordshire’s housing crisis, but in addition we have embarked upon our own programme of scrutinising Oxford City’s position, providing our own evidence for the number of homes required outside of the City, and then looking at where that housing could be sited. The Vale has decided to make the programme very public to ensure that communities have the opportunity to engage with the process at the earliest stage. Until the quantity of housing has been established the Council is merely looking at scenario planning. 3,000 is talked about as a possibility, but the final number could be higher or lower. The important thing about all of these decisions is not about the numbers to consider the impact on communities across the district which is why the Council is addressing this problem head on.