A neighbourhood plan for Littlemore
We hope that as many people as possible who live, study or work in Littlemore will assist in creating a Neighbourhood Plan for Littlemore. It is a good way for everyone in Littlemore, whatever their views, to come together to try and make Littlemore an even better place to live.
What is a Neighbourhood Plan?
A Neighbourhood Plan is a statutory planning document which links with the Oxford City Local Plan but provides more of a local flavour. The aim of it is to ensure that future development is in line with what local people want and think is appropriate for Littlemore Parish. Neighbourhood Plans contain two sorts of policy – strategic ones which directly affect planning applications and community ones which are more general to highlight possible improvements. The Plan has to be approved at a referendum, which we hope will be in May 2025. So it does not deal with immediate issues but should be of great benefit to Littlemore in the long-term.
The process can be lengthy and complex but we try to keep people updated regularly through the Littlemore Local and the Parish Council website. We asked those who live, study or work in Littlemore to complete an Issues and Options survey in Summer 2023 and were pleased to receive 515 responses – thank you. During Autumn 2023 five policy groups drew up draft policies based on an analysis of these, statistics on Littlemore and discussions about the identity and character of Littlemore and how this may be affected over the next 15 years. In January 2024, the draft Plan was then written and in February 2024 the Parish Council approved it for public consultation. The pre-submission public consultation opened on May 7th and ran until 18th June 2024. We have now analyzed the responses (most of which were very positive) and made some relatively small changes in the light of these.
One part of the process is that Oxford City Council have to complete a screening statement to assess the need for a Strategic Environmental Assessment and/or a Habitats Regulations Assessment. They have indicated that this is not necessary and completed their formal screening statement which can be found here.
What happens next?
The revised Plan, which can be seen here, was approved by the Parish Council on Tuesday 10th September and formally submitted to Oxford City Council along with the required supporting documentation. The City Council checked that the draft Plan meets the necessary legal requirements and arranged the next consultation which ran from 28th October to 9th December 2024.
After this, the Working Group considered the responses and recommended some relatively small amendments which were accepted by the Parish Council at their January meeting. These and the necessary accompanying documents were submitted to Oxford City Council at the end of January 2025. These need to be considered by the City Council and approved by the City Council Cabinet. This will be at their meeting in April 2025. The Neighbourhood Plan will then be formally examined by an independent examiner which may result in further changes.
We had hoped that the final Plan would then be put to residents for adoption in a referendum in May 2025, though this is now not possible. The referendum will be later in 2025 or in 2026 though the date will not be decided until the independent examination is completed. Please contact Tony Eaude on [email protected] if you have any queries, and copy to the Clerk at [email protected]
February 2025