The Head of Planning Services has submitted a report to present the Action Plan for continuing to support and improve housing delivery in Oxford.

Recommendation: That Cabinet resolves to:

1.    Approve the Oxford Housing Delivery Test Action Plan 2020.

The Head of Planning Services had submitted a report to present the Action Plan for continuing to support and improve housing delivery in Oxford.

Councillor Alex Hollingsworth, Cabinet Member for Planning and Housing Delivery, introduced the report.  The Government had yet to decide what criterion to measure the Council’s housing delivery performance against. Having done so it was possible that the Council might fall below a threshold, possibly for a very short time, which would require the introduction of an action plan. This would not necessarily be a bad thing, given that the need for more housing was not just a technical matter but an ethical one too.

The Chair explained that an additional recommendation was to be added to the one given in the report as a result of the recommendation from the Housing & Homelessness Panel.  That recommendation is recorded below

Cabinet resolved to:

1.    Approve the Oxford Housing Delivery Test Action Plan 2020; and

2.    Authorise the Planning Policy and Place Manager to make minor updates as deemed necessary to the Housing Delivery Test Action Plan document ahead of publication of the final document on the Council’s website and to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG).