Public addresses relating to matters of business for this agenda, up to five minutes is available for each public address.

The request to speak accompanied by the full text of the address must be received by the Director of Law, Governance and Strategy by 5.00 pm on Thursday, the 15^th of January.

Cabinet received one address from a member of the public.

Dominic Woodfield, representative of Friends of Iffley Village

I address you on behalf of Friends of Iffley Village, but also as an ecological and environmental planning consultant with longstanding experience of the Local Plan process and the concept of ‘soundness’.

I wish to explain why I and many others believe strongly that your planning policy department’s proposed retention of the “Land at Meadow Lane, Iffley” site allocation (SPS 8), is unsound and why the allocation should be deleted and the land properly (and belatedly) zoned as a vital part of the city’s Green Infrastructure network.

This is a site that this Council has rejected as unsuitable twice previously. It passed muster in the preparation of the last Local Plan only due to a series of technical and procedural errors. Surveys since 2021 have outed those errors, revealing beyond question that this is a site of at least city-wide importance for nature conservation, comfortably meeting the criteria for formal designation, and harbouring rare, scarce and protected species. The recently published Local Nature Recovery Strategy for Oxfordshire duly recognises this importance.

These ancient meadows are also a designated and integral part of Iffley’s Conservation Area, close to the Thames (and partly in flood zone 3). Any development would require road traffic to be introduced along a designated Principal (and very popular) Quiet Route for Active Travel which adjoins the site, directly compromising its function and value for non-car transport.

Applying the Council’s criteria for Green Space multifunctionality (agenda pack p109-110) not only does this site tick all 6 environmental functions, but also several social / health and wellbeing functions, and economic functions giving a total score of 13/17. With such a high score it is clear that the meadows should be re-zoned and protected as a ‘Core (green) space’ under Policy G1A.

The unsuitability of this site for development is further reflected in the Council’s own sustainability appraisal process.

The relevant Sustainability Appraisal Site Assessment Forms (pp664-670 of the agenda report) demonstrate that (compared to other sites in the emerging plan), the Land at Meadow Lane site is a clear outlier, with 15 negative flags raised against it: 2 red (conservation, biodiversity) and 13 amber (including flood risk, access and transport, and poor use of land). These constraints act cumulatively to provide no certainty of delivery of any housing, hence the absurd ‘ZERO’ figure in the proposed allocation. The next most sensitive site (with 11 negative flags) is the Kassam overflow carpark (SPS11) which as a previously developed site dominated by hardstanding is in no way comparable and will actually deliver a substantive number of 100 homes.

Moreover, this sustainability appraisal, as damning as it already is, remains infected by factual errors and very questionable assumptions carried over from its flawed LP2036 predecessor, despite these having been highlighted via 2 rounds of consultation feedback. For example, the appraisal still fails to accurately note or record that the ancient meadows are an integral part of the Iffley Conservation Area, which is of course about protecting setting as well as material structures. The meadow is a crucial part of that setting. Further, the list of notable ecological features, while correctly mentioning that the site is of at least City Wildlife Site status, fails to mention that the site is wholly within the LNRS not just part of it as the appraisal and draft policy claims. These are base errors and their correction will worsen the site’s sustainability score still further.

This cabinet is presented with an opportunity to rectify these past and ongoing mistakes. There can be no remaining question that it was a mistake to allocate Land at Meadow Lane for housing in LP 2036. The Council’s own work on a planning application, and its abandonment of a minimum target for the delivery of homes at this location, merely exposes the magnitude of that mistake and the extent to which this meadow is an unsuitable and unsustainable site for any development.

Circumstances around housing need have also, changed considerably since the 2036 LP was adopted:

The availability of sites for residential delivery has expanded via:

- redundant retail and long-unused commercial;

- new employment site policies;

- expansion onto the greenbelt that could bring a vast number of new homes.

Meanwhile:

- The severity of the climate and ecological emergencies has worsened;

- The mental and physical health of children and young people has become a more acute issue, related to their diminishing contact with nature, for which there is little structured provision for them in this City.

There is growing support for an alternative beneficial use of the meadows in Iffley as a dedicated, safe site for outdoor education to benefit the learning and wellbeing of young people in East Oxford, where there are very high rates of deprivation. At just under 1 hectare, the meadow is just large enough to accommodate managed footfall whilst at the same time protecting and enhancing its important biodiversity. Supporting agencies are poised to secure funding for the delivery of this initiative, at little or no cost to the Council.

To conclude, there is simply no policy or moral justification for re-allocating Land at Meadow Lane in the draft LP 2045. Please remove it so that the draft Plan can go forward for adoption on a sound basis and so that the outdoor education proposal can be advanced. This would be a win not just for sustainability but also a win for this Council, demonstrating it that it is capable of recognising and reacting to changed circumstances and is genuinely forward thinking in planning the future resilience of this City.

Thank you.

Councillor Alex Hollingsworth responded to the address from the member of the public and saidthat he would ask Council officers to address the issues and concerns raised in their discussion of the report under agenda item 10.