The Head of Planning Services had submitted a report to request that Cabinet  recommends the adoption of the Oxford Local Plan 2036 to Council.

Councillor Alex Hollingsworth, Cabinet Member for Planning & Housing Delivery, spoke to the report by first thanking  officers, with particular reference to those in the Planning Team,  for their work over the last 4 years in getting the plan to its current stage. He noted that the Planning Inspector had also taken time at the end of the hearings to  thank officers  for the excellent and detailed presentation of evidence and knowledge they had brought to the process which was a tribute to all those involved.

He went on to table an additional recommendation to those before Cabinet, as follows:

Recommend that Council NOTES that, as previously outlined in earlier discussions of the Oxford Local Plan 2036 in Scrutiny, Cabinet and Full Council, a timetable for the next Local Plan which is aligned to the latest Oxfordshire Plan 2050 timetable and co-ordinated with the Local Plan timetables of other District Councils in Oxfordshire will be brought to Cabinet in July 2020 – and Scrutiny as required – as part of the updated Local Development Scheme.

As the wording indicated, this would serve to reinforce what had been said on previous occasions and would facilitate more effective joint working on Local Plan issues than hitherto.

The Chair added her thanks to all those involved for this very significant piece of work.

Cabinet resolved to:

1.       Recommend that Council agrees to adopt the Oxford Local Plan 2036 and associated updates to the policies map; and recommend

That Council resolves to:

1.       Adopt the Oxford Local Plan 2036 (set out at Appendix 1 to this report), which incorporates the Inspectors’ Main Modifications (set out at Appendix 3 to this report) and the City Council’s Additional Modifications (set out at Appendix 4 to this report) as part of the statutory development plan for the area as listed in Appendix 6;

2.       Adopt the updates to the Oxford City Adopted Policies Map in line with the Oxford Local Plan 2036 set out at Appendix 5 to this report;

3.       Authorise the Head of Planning Services, in consultation with the Cabinet Member for Planning and Housing Delivery, to finalise the necessary documents to support adoption including the Adoption Statement (draft as Appendix 7) and Sustainability Statement (draft as Appendix 8) and to make such minor editorial corrections to the adopted Local Plan (Appendix 1) and Policies Map (Appendix 5) as deemed necessary ahead of publication. This will include a final desktop published version of the Oxford Local Plan 2036 and adopted policies map; and

4. Notethat, as previously outlined in earlier discussions of the Oxford Local Plan 2036 in Scrutiny, Cabinet and Full Council, a timetable for the next Local Plan which is aligned to the latest Oxfordshire Plan 2050 timetable and co-ordinated with the Local Plan timetables of other District Councils in Oxfordshire will be brought to Cabinet in July 2020 – and Scrutiny as required – as part of the updated Local Development Scheme.