The Cherwell District Council is reviewing its Local Plan. This is required under the Planning Regulations which require local plans to be reviewed at least every five years from their adoption date. Planning Practice Guidance makes clear that:
‘Most plans are likely to require updating in whole or in part, at least every five years’ .
Cherwell’s existing Local Plan consists of three documents:
- Saved policies of the Cherwell Local Plan 1996,
- Cherwell Local Plan 2011 – 2031 (Part 1) (Adopted 2015)
- Cherwell Local Plan 2011 – 2031 (Part 1) Partial Review – Oxford’s Unmet Housing Need (Adopted 2020).
As you may know the draft plan will be reviewed by the Overview and Scrutiny Committee on Wednesday 11 Jan 2023 before it is presented to the planning executive as its meeting on Thursday 19 Jan 2023. You can see all the information for the meeting here:
Agenda Item 6 – Appendix 1 – Emerging Draft Cherwell Local Plan 2040 PDF 9 MB
Agenda Item 6 – Appendix 2 – Emerging Draft Cherwell Local Plan 2040 Appendices PDF 28 MB
Agenda Item 6 – Appendix 3 – Housing & Economic Needs Assessment CDC and Oxford City 22 PDF 5 MB
Once agreed and published, still as a Draft Plan, Parish Councils and individuals will be given the opportunity to respond to the plan during a 6 week consultation period.
Last year, land owners, their agents/developers were invited to offer sites for development and the table below shows the offers which were received for land in the Bourtons. We have added some commentary on each parcel of land for reference. You can see that if all the land offered were developed, it would provide a potential of 225 new dwellings across the parish.
| Site & developer | Existing references | Commentary |
| LPR A 044
Evan Owen for Mr Karim & Mr Iqbal |
Land parcel 2783
09/01299/F 14/01388/F
|
Site location- 1.5 hectares : off Main Street to the east, opposite The Paddocks site
Application for 6 stables : REFUSED Application for 4 stables : PERMITTED; but application now expired and subject of enforcement action terminating application. No other outstanding applications. Agent suggests between 30 – 50 dwellings
|
| LPR A 088
Brown & Co for Mr M Smalley |
Land off School Lane
21/00922/OUT 22/03215/PIP |
Site location : land comprising 2.5 acres/1.01 hectares described as being off School Lane. This is an incorrect location description! It is actually located off Foxden Way and includes the site formally the basis of the refused application for 9 1st homes and refused PIP application for 4/5 bungalows by Fernhill. Agent suggests up to 25 dwellings |
| LPR A 090
Tom Birks – Brown & Co / Mr I Amos, Mr R Amos, Ms H L Stewart, Mr M Smalley and Mrs C Campion |
Land off South View | Site location : off South View comprising 4.86 hectares.
No previous applications. Agent suggests the site can accommodate a maximum of 120 dwellings. |
| LPR A 114
Sworders for Brian & Lynne Aries |
Land south of Crow Lane
22/02544/Q56 22/03870/Q56
|
Site location : rectangular plot at junction of Crow Lane & Foxden Way, includes current barn located at the western edge of the site opposite Mulberry Corner.
Previous application for conversion of Home Farm Barn to a dwelling refused : subsequent application under consultation. Agent suggests the site could accommodate a maximum of 15 dwellings. |
| LPA A 134
Fernhill Estates for Fergus White |
Land north of Chapel Lane OX17 1RD | Site location : at the bottom of Chapel Lane opposite the children’s’ playground.
No recent previous applications. Agent suggests site could accommodate between up to 15 dwellings.
|
The draft plan was issued to all parishes and you can see our first response to the draft HERE.
Once agreed and published, still as a Draft Plan, Parish Councils and individuals will be given the opportunity to respond to the plan during a 6 week consultation period.
Our clerk and chairman attended a meeting regarding the draft Local Plan last October and the information from that meeting was encouraging: there would be fewer Category A villages and for Category B villages there would be less pressure for housing development. Certainly it looks as though Cropredy has not been identified as a larger village and we have been listed as a small village, so we shall see what the final plan says about development in the Bourtons. As always, we know that the devil is in the detail and we can be fairly sure that developers will study the plan to see where gains can be made in terms of development which is likely to be approved.
One of the points which has hindered us on many applications, is the statement that CDC do not have a 5 year housing supply which at the moment is required by the government’s National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF). At the CDC October presentation we were led to believe that this would be revised in view of the fact that the level of approved development in the Cherwell District would meet this need. However, even if this is the case, planners are partial to rural ‘windfall sites’ to which the land identified in the Bourtons would add to. There will be restrictions on the number of dwellings which can be developed in small villages on each parcel of land so at least the offer of 120 houses on the South View site should not be accepted.
The Parish Council will still need to address each of the offered sites where applicants have offered a smaller number of dwellings as the minimum number to be developed and we shall need to look closely at the draft local plan to respond in terms of policy. The bottom line is that we are currently a category B village with no sustainable services and where travel by car is essential to manage day to day to activity for residents so we are not compatible with the CDC theme 1 of Meeting the Challenge of Climate Change. Some of the submissions for land development in the Bourtons have painted quite a different picture in their documentation.
No doubt many of you will want to respond to the draft plan once it is issued: please do share your views with us. As always, we are keen to capture residents’ views in our response but have to bear in mind that our objections need to fall in line with local and national policy and law.
You can see the agenda for the Overview & Scrutiny Committee meeting and we will publish the final draft local plan here when we have received it.
