The Scrutiny Committee will meet on 13 January 2025 to consider the following items. Report and recommendations, including those from its working groups, will be published as a late supplement.

• Workforce Equality Update
• Proposed Submission Draft Oxford Local Plan 2045

The Scrutiny Committee met on 13 January 2025 and considered the following items.

• Workforce Equality Update

• Proposed Submission Draft Oxford Local Plan 2045

Councillor Alex Powell presented the Scrutiny Committee’s discussions and recommendations regarding the Workforce Equality Update. He said that the Committee had noted the progress that the Council had made in this area of work.

• Recommendation 1: That the current target for workforce representation of 17% for employees from minority ethnic groups be increased to a higher, evidence-based, figure in order to restrengthen the Council’s recruitment from these groups.
• Recommendation 2: That Cabinet fully implement an anonymised, third-party reporting system, reflecting standard practice across the public and private sectors, to enable employees to raise concerns relating to harassment, bullying, discrimination, corruption and other workplace-related issues with confidence.
• Recommendation 3: Acknowledging there are challenges posed by low staff numbers and reliability of available data in this area, that future workforce equality reports include a dedicated section on gender reassignment, recognising this as a protected characteristic.

Councillor Chapman presented Cabinet’s response to this discussion and recommendations. He said that Cabinet accepted the first recommendation and would consider what the figure could be raised to. He said that Cabinet also accepted the second recommendation. Regarding the third recommendation, he said that Cabinet would accept the recommendation in part, due to issues of staff privacy.

Councillor Alex Powell presented the Scrutiny Committee’s discussions and recommendations regarding the Proposed Submission Draft Oxford Local Plan 2045. He noted that there had been a lot of discussion about local centres in the Committee’s consideration of the report. He noted that the Committee also discussed the removal of the Meadow Lane allocation, concerns about addressing the needs of children and young people, and the feasibility to deliver greater levels of affordable housing.

• Recommendation 1: For officers to undertake a further review of the areas in Greater Leys, in particular Dunnock Way, and other sites such as Littlemore to be allocated Local Centres under Policy C1, noting their similarities to Underhill Circus.
• Recommendation 2: That the evidence-base is thoroughly examined to determine whether 10% biodiversity net gain is conclusively the most ambitious minimum the council could set.
• Recommendation 3: For officers to explore whether a higher threshold for the acceptability of loss of sports facilities could be incorporated in the Local Plan.
• Recommendation 4: For officers to reconsider the language in Policy C2(h) encouraging the development of city centre play amenity.

Councillor Hollingsworth responded to the recommendations from Scrutiny Committee. Of the four recommendations, he noted that the questions had been raised by previous local plans and that they were working within distinct definitions and limitations. He said that officers were thinking about the first recommendation and were considering how they could address the challenge raised by this recommendation. Regarding the second recommendation, he said that the minimum they had set was the most ambitious which was possible for the Council to pursue, so they were not accepting the recommendation.

On the third recommendation, Councillor Hollingsworth said that the Local Plan was already setting higher thresholds than required and that they did not think it was possible to go any further than they had proposed. Councillor Hollingsworth said that they did reconsider the language referenced in recommendation four and that Cabinet and Officers believed that the language was sensible as it read and should not be changed as requested in the recommendation. Councillor Hollingsworth said that there was a larger issue in how Local Plans treat children and play. However, he said that the wording in Policy C2(h) was sufficiently broad to indicate the Council’s support for play areas.