Statement on Oxfordshire County Council's decision to withdraw and review parking standards.
Oxford City Council welcomes Oxfordshire County Council’s decision to withdraw and review the Parking Standards for New Developments.
The decision comes after Councillor Anna Railton, as well as local developers and landowners, raised concerns to the County Council.
“Having written to Oxfordshire County Council to express our concerns about the recently adopted parking standards, we are pleased it has listened to the points we raised, alongside those raised by other local developers and landowners, and has decided to withdraw the standards while undertaking further review. This provides an important opportunity to make sure our shared ambitions for sustainable transport can be delivered alongside the much-needed new housing, including affordable homes, Oxford and Oxfordshire needs.
“While we fully support efforts to reduce car dependency and increase the use of sustainable travel, it is essential that planning and transport policies work together to support housing delivery, including much needed affordable homes to meet the city’s needs. We look forward to working with the County Council and partners across Oxfordshire to review the evidence and develop an approach that supports modal shift and enables building the homes our communities urgently need.”
Councillor Anna Railton, Deputy Leader, and Cabinet Member for Planning and Zero Carbon Oxford
Councillor Railton’s letter can be read below.
Dear Councillor Gareth Epps
It was really good to meet you at the City/County Joint Member Briefing last week. I thought the meeting was very constructive and I look forward work working with you, and Cllr Gordon, to deliver for Oxford and Oxfordshire’s citizens.I am writing to express our significant concerns with the new parking standards adopted by the County Council in April this year. As you will know, we share your ambition to move towards more sustainable modes of travel, have engaged with you on a wide range of projects and plans and take a strong approach in our existing and emerging Local Plans to support this. In parallel, we are also focused on the delivery of new homes, and indeed affordable homes, to address Oxford and Oxfordshire’s housing crisis.
Unfortunately, the newly adopted parking standards, particularly those associated with carfree development, present us all with a significant problem. In short, they will likely negatively impact the delivery of thousands of homes across the county, including the many thousands of homes associated with (and allocated for) meeting Oxford’s unmet need.
Put simply, this is because of the significant risk that it will not be possible to sell family homes in car-free schemes outside of the city of Oxford. This level of risk will mean that developers will be highly unlikely to build or indeed be able to secure funding to deliver family housing at scale. Moreover, without parking, the social rented family homes will also be difficult to sell to Registered Providers for the same reason. On large urban extensions, many released for development specifically to deliver Oxford’s unmet housing net, there is even some risk that developers will seek to design out compliance with criteria with negative impact on the provision of local facilities.
It appears that no evidence on the impact of housing delivery was undertaken as part of the development of the new standards. Moreover, my understanding is that none of the Oxfordshire Local Planning Authorities were engaged meaningfully in the development of these standards, while developer engagement was at best partial and at a very early stage of development. There are also questions about both the depth of the equalities impact
assessment for this policy and what weight can be attached to these policy driven standards in the absence of effective public consultation.
Given the fact that it will be the LPAs that will be responsible for delivering these standards through the planning system, and it is the LPAs’ five-year housing land supplies and unmet needs sites that are being put at risk, this is a real problem. We note that at paragraph 28 of the Cabinet report it says: “the revised standards will be communicated to district and city councils, developers and design teams to support consistent application.” We would respectfully point out that Oxfordshire County Council is a statutory consultee on planning applications, and the Parking Standards for New Developments guidance document will inform your responses to those consultations. However, the LPAs will be the bodies responsible for determining the applications and defining the necessary conditions and planning obligations to make the proposals acceptable. As such, for these standards to be effective, they need to benefit from meaningful engagement and input from the LPAs.
There is now a significant risk that many of our allocated sites simply do not come forward. Given this, and the lack of evidence to the contrary around the impact of housing delivery, simply waiting and monitoring the impact of standards could well see thousands of homes delayed by many years.
Given the broad impact and importance of this issue, I have copied this letter to all planning portfolio holders (with responsibility for development management) across Oxfordshire. I would like to suggest that a constructive way forward would be for the County Council to convene a meeting with us all, alongside senior officers, to discuss this matter and options moving forward.
Ultimately, I hope we can collectively work to further refine the parking standards based on further evidence, including the impact on housing delivery, while retaining an ambitious and realistic pathway towards greater modal shift away from private vehicles.
Yours sincerely
Cllr Anna Railton
Deputy Leader and Cabinet Member for Planning & Zero Carbon Oxford City Council
