Housing Group

The Housing Group is compiling a profile of the housing provision across Headington in order to inform the Forum’s views on such issues as the preferred types of housing and extensions, design, conservation, sustainability, compliance with Oxford’s Local Plan and Government requirements.

Oxford City Council’s current Housing Strategy can be viewed here.

The City’s Local Plan has two relevant documents which can be found at Housing Provision and Core Policies.

The City’s Housing Policies are set out in several documents:
Sites and Housing Plan
Balance of Dwelling SPD
Affordable Housing and Planning Obligations SPD

SPD = Supplementary Planning Document

The Strategic Housing Market Assessment (SHMA) for Oxfordshire was published in March 2014. It concludes that up to 93,560 – 106,560 additional homes are needed across Oxfordshire in the period 2011-2031 (between 4,678 – 5,328 homes per annum). This is based on meeting the housing need identified, supporting committed economic growth (including the City Deal) and improving housing affordability as required by Government. The SHMA provides a starting point by identifying the level of housing need. There is a significant level of further work to do to test whether this can be accommodated, to identify where housing should go, and to plan for the supporting infrastructure investment which will be needed to ensure that growth is sustainable. This further work will refine the overall level of housing provision which needs to be planned for, and how this is distributed to different parts of Oxfordshire.

The full SHMA report is available here

The Forum member who led this group was John Nealon.