Need Not Greed Oxfordshire is calling on councillors to do a ‘Kickflip Indy’ on the Oxfordshire Plan, and change direction to a lower rate of growth, to stay firmly on top of the environmental skateboard.
The campaigners say that even the lowest rate of growth proposed in the Plan (102,000 houses by 2050) would require such a dramatic increase in housing and population that a zero-carbon, sustainable future for Oxfordshire would be virtually impossible.
In particular, they have criticised the Oxfordshire Growth Needs Assessment (OGNA), a background paper which is supposed to provide the ‘robust and transparent’ evidence to support the various growth options.
David Young, from Greenway (an NNGO coalition member), said: “This document is complicated and obscure. We suspect that most councillors won’t have time to read it, let alone understand it. Far from being robust and transparent, it seems to exaggerate the figures at every turn and then hide the impacts.
“We believe that to use the Oxfordshire Growth Needs Assessment as the basis for planning for the county for the next 30 years would be entirely inappropriate. We think the only solution now is an independent peer-review of this document which is not fit for purpose.
“We are calling on the councillors and officers involved in the Oxfordshire Plan 2050 team to act quickly to put such a review in place.”
The public consultation on the Oxfordshire Plan 2050 ends on 8 October. NNGO is urging all Oxfordshire residents to have their say.