Decision time on growth

A guide

17 July 2022

aerial view of an expanding town

If you are trying to understand all the plans and strategies for our city and county but are too confused by how they relate to each other to marshal your thoughts, you are not alone!

There’s the Oxfordshire Vision, the Oxfordshire Local Industrial Strategy, the Pathways to a Zero Carbon Oxfordshire, the Oxfordshire Infrastructure Strategy, the Oxfordshire 2050 Plan and the Local Transport and Connectivity Plan, not to mention the Local Plans for the city and each of the four surrounding districts. And underlying all of these is a contentious set of assumptions about the scale, pace, distribution and sustainability of economic growth.

There are public consultations (completed, current or planned) on these, and District, City and County councillors will soon be making critical decisions on the scale, pace, distribution and sustainability of growth in Oxfordshire.

We’ve set out to help them by pulling together all the relevant strategies and plans in one document. Our Guide is designed to clarify the issues for everyone – councillors, businesses, special interest groups and the general public. It also contains suggestions to help simplify the decision-making process.

Whether there should be more growth in Oxfordshire, and if so how much and where, are highly contentious issues. If decision-makers get it right we stand to benefit from a thriving economy, more adequate housing, less road congestion, effective infrastructure, less pollution, thriving communities and wildlife. Get it wrong and we will pay a heavy price that we will regret for decades to come. All our futures are at stake.

The Guide is designed to be accessible to the widest possible audience. The leading article in the July edition of our newsletter “Visions” is a summary and the full Guide can be freely downloaded from this website (see links below). We hope everyone who is interested in the future of our city and county will want to read it.