This section gives details of all projects, past and current, that have been commissioned or delivered by the Oxfordshire Growth Board. All relevant reports are also included here.
The projects are organised under larger programmes of work. Click on a programme to find out more about it and read details of their projects.
The Oxfordshire Infrastructure Strategy (OxIS) is an Oxfordshire Growth Board commissioned project involving all six Oxfordshire Local Authorities. Its purpose is to identify, map and prioritise Oxfordshire’s infrastructure requirements to 2040 and beyond.
The Strategy will be informed by a variety of strategic documents including council Local Plans. Statutory organisations, infrastructure and service providers, including Health, Emergency Services, Utility and Green Infrastructure providers, will also input into its development.
OxIS will provide Oxfordshire with a common platform to:
The project is being developed in two phases.
The Strategy will be informed by a variety of strategic documents including council Local Plans. Statutory organisations, infrastructure and service providers, including Health, Emergency Services, Utility and Green Infrastructure providers, will also input into its development.
As part of stage two, feedback from stakeholders and the public on the themes that are important to local communities was used in shaping the assessment tool.
The first stage is a technical phase that includes the mapping of all known infrastructure planned or required to meet projected growth demands.
The SHMA is a technical study intended to help the Oxfordshire local planning authorities understand how many homes will be needed in the period 2011 – 2031. It also considers the housing needs of specific groups such as older people, minority groups and people with disabilities and what housing growth will be needed to support the economy.
It is generally agreed by the councils that Oxford cannot fully accommodate its housing needs within its administrative boundaries .The Post SHMA Strategic work Programme comprises a number of projects that collectively examine what the best spatial options for accommodating the unmet need might be across the County.
The Programme will not make decisions on where housing growth should go as this is the responsibility of district councils in their Local Plans. However the Programme will seek to provide an apportionment of the agreed level of unmet need between the Oxfordshire district councils that they can then take forward in their local plans. This apportionment will be based upon a comprehensive, county-wide evidence base that will serve to also inform local plans.
This project looked at the transport implications of development within the 36 areas of search that could potentially accommodate the working assumption of Oxford City’s unmet housing need.
This project was the identification and assessment of a list of 36 plausible areas of search as strategic options for growth. The areas of search are high level areas for development consideration rather than precisely defined sites, with an agreed minimum threshold of 500 dwellings and a clear relationship to Oxford in terms of proximity and accessibility.
The study is the first of its kind since the Oxford Green Belt was formalised in the 1970s and gives a comprehensive picture of how well the Green Belt is performing for Oxfordshire.
Before the partners considered how to address the unmet housing need of Oxford it agreed to a project to try to arrive at a common position on the scale of unmet need.
A high level assessment of the implications for the provision of primary and secondary school places from the potential development of the 36 identified areas of search for accommodating Oxford’s unmet housing need.
As well as delivering the homes Oxfordshire greatly needs, the programme will provide much needed transport infrastructure, such as bridges, roundabouts and roads, across the region.
Over a quarter of the new funding made available, £60 million, will support affordable housing across the county to deliver more than 1,300 affordable homes – at least half of which will be for social rent – helping first time buyers and local people looking to get a foot on the housing ladder.
The Oxfordshire Growth Board has published details of the first round of infrastructure projects to receive funding in year one of the five year Oxfordshire Housing & Growth Deal, signed in February 2018.