This is the City Council’s 12th AMR to assess the effectiveness of planning policies contained within Oxford’s Local Development Plan.

Cllr Hollingsworth arrived at the meeting.

The Head of Planning and Regulatory submitted a report which detailed the Annual Monitoring Report for approval.

The Planning Policy& Specialist Services Manager presented the report.  He explained that the report was produced every year and showed which planning policies are working well and which may need a review. This report would help inform the policies in the new Oxford Local Plan 2036.

Highlights of the monitoring report are:

·         Overall housing numbers are looking good, with 383 homes completed.  In the 10 years since the start of the Core Strategy 3,843 homes have been built, which is 157 less that the target, which is very good especially considering the recession in the middle of the period.  We expect a spike in the next few years with new developments such as Barton Park Littlemore and Northern Gateway coming forward.

·         Affordable housing numbers are looking good , with 164 homes completed, which includes 107 homes provided in through the City Council’s own house building programme

·         In terms of students living outside of university provided accommodation.  The University of Oxford is below the 3,000 student target but Oxford Brookes University is above it at 3,747. Representatives of Oxford Brookes University came to the Scrutiny Housing Panel last week and explained their position and have issued a strategy to resolve the issue.

Cllr Gant, Chair of the Scrutiny Committee presented the Scrutiny report. He said the Scrutiny Committee had discussed the matter of the number of student living outside provided accommodation and the range of options that officers and the universities were considering to reduce the number of students living outside of student accommodation in the city.

Cllr Hollingsworth, Board Member for Planning and Regulatory explained his draft responds to the Scrutiny recommendations. He felt that in light of his current traffic woes at getting to the meeting, that indicator 33 Traffic Growth at Inner and Outer Cordons was definitely worth retaining to inform the Council on where the pinch points in the city are.

The Planning Policy& Specialist Services Manager said that since the report was published, officers have calculated the city’s housing land supply.  Oxford has 6.3 years supply of housing sites which is above the national target of 5 years.  It is proposed to add the relevant table into the Annual Monitoring Report when it is published.

Cllr Turner noted that the Council’s affordable housing figures were in complete contrast to many others local authorities.

The City Executive Board resolved to:

1.    Approve the Annual Monitoring Report 2015/16 for publication.

2.    Authorise the Head of Planning and Regulatory Services to make any necessary additional minor corrections not materially affecting the document prior to publication.

3.    Add the Oxford Housing Land supply table to the Annual Monitoring Report before it is published.

Cllr Price arrived at the meeting