Joint Local Plan 2041
South Oxfordshire and Vale of White Horse district councils are working together on a Joint Local Plan which will guide the kinds of new housing and jobs needed and where they should go, informing planning application decisions for the districts. In the Joint Local Plan we are developing planning policies that help address the climate emergency, restore nature, and meet the needs of our residents, such as delivering genuinely affordable low-carbon homes with the right infrastructure to go with it.
After three years of preparation, we have now submitted the Joint Local Plan to the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government for examination by an independent Planning Inspector. You can read more about this on our Joint Local Plan Examination webpage. You can read the plan along with all the supporting documents in our Examination Library.
Prior to submission, we published the plan for a six-week period under Regulation 19 of The Town and Country Planning (Local Planning) (England) Regulations 2012. Representations were invited during this publication period, which started on 1 October and ended at 11.59pm on 12 November 2024. You can read the comments we received here.
During the plan’s development, we carried out extensive consultation with our communities – you can read all about how our communities helped us draft the plan here.
Consultation on Sustainability Appraisal Technical Addendum
We have prepared a Sustainability Report as part of the combined Sustainability Appraisal (SA) and Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) process for the Joint Local Plan 2041.
The first stage in the SA process was the production of a SA Screening and Scoping Report, which was published in 2022. This report included a review of other plans, policies and programmes already in place which could influence the Joint Local Plan. The report went on to establish the baseline environmental, social and economic conditions in the districts to help define key opportunities and challenges facing the area which might be addressed by the Joint Local Plan.
We published a Technical Addendum to the Sustainability Appraisal Scoping Report for consultation from 6 December 2024 to 17 January 2025, in accordance with Schedule 2 of the Environmental Assessment of Plans and Programmes Regulations 2004. It provides supplementary detail on how the ‘future baseline’ in the two districts is likely to evolve without implementation of the Joint Local Plan.
You can view the responses we received here. These have been provided to the Inspectors carrying out the Examination.
Adopted Local Plans
If you’re looking for both councils’ current Local Plans, which the new Joint Local Plan will replace once adopted, you can find them using the links below:
- South Oxfordshire Local Plan 2035 (adopted December 2020)
- Vale of White Horse Local Plan 2031 Part 1 (adopted December 2016) and Local Plan 2031 Part 2 (adopted October 2019)
Contact us - Planning policy
01235 422600
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Vale of White Horse District Council
Abbey House
Abbey Close
Abingdon
OX14 3JE
