Agenda item

The terms of reference of the Panel state:

Members of the public may address meetings of the Scrutiny Panel, where notice is given to the secretariat no later than 4.00pm on the last working day before the day of the meeting.

The Chair will have discretion to manage the public participation procedure as they see appropriate, including rejecting frivolous, defamatory or offensive questions and managing the time afforded to public addresses.

Notice of a wish to address the meeting, including the subject of the address or the full question to be asked, must be sent to

democratic.services@oxfordshiregrowthboard.org

by 4.00pm on Wednesday 20 March 2019.

The Chair’s decision will be final.

The Panel heard two questions and one statement from members of the public.

Dr Eugenie Buchan representing Elsfield Residents Group, asked the following questions:

‘Tonight, the Scrutiny Panel is looking at a proposal to commission a new review of the Oxford Green Belt. According to the text, you will carry out the assessment 'in a holistic manner alongside the development of a strategic framework for growth up to 2050: it will ‘inform decision making and outline a Green Belt appropriate for the mid-21st Century'.

It is logical for the Growth Board to be pre-occupied with growth. And indeed, in this consultation, nearly all the topic papers including the Sustainability Appraisal Scoping Report, stress the growth ambitions of Local Plan 2050, not least the goal of building, by the mid-2030s, a hundred thousand new homes with required infrastructure and motorways to support even more housing, if the Oxford-Cambridge Expressway goes ahead.

But the purpose of our planning system is not to promote growth per se, but to contribute to the achievement of sustainability which, traditionally is defined as ‘meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs’.  

 For future generations the greatest challenge will be Climate Change and its rate of change is accelerating. On Tuesday the head of the Environment Agency, a seasoned diplomat who has been trained to measure his words, warned that the country could run out of water within 25 years and that England would reach the "jaws of death - the point at which, unless we take action to change things, we will not have enough water to supply our needs".

What would be the point of planning for a hundred thousand new houses in Oxfordshire if we do not have enough water and other natural resources to sustain them through to the end of the century?

 So I have three inter-related questions about the purpose of Local Plan 2050 and the Green Belt Review:

a)            It seems to me that the primary purpose of your Green Belt review is to assess how much of it can be urbanised. But in light of climate change, do you agree/disagree that we need to rethink the function of green belts?  For example, would your review and the Sustainability Appraisal score the five functions of the Green Belt in terms of capacity to protect biodiversity, a carbon neutral economy, air quality and water conservation?

b)            Do you agree/disagree that LP 2050 needs to prioritise Climate Change rather than ‘growth’ in order to deliver long term sustainability in Oxfordshire?

c)             Do you agree/disagree that to counter the threat of Climate Change, local authorities need to come together both to lobby central government and formulate specific measures to incentivise resource conservation, restoration of degraded ecosystems and rapid transition to a zero-carbon emission economy? 

I trust that the Growth Board and the District Councils recognise the urgency of Climate Change and the central part that the Green Belt can and does play in mitigating it. In response to the current consultation, I count on you and your consultants to develop a strategic framework that puts at the top of the agenda the need to tackle Climate Change and to deliver Sustainability for the 21^st century.’

Dr Peter Collins, representing the Campaign for the Protection of Rural England, (CPRE) gave the following statement:

‘This addresses CPRE’s concerns over the processes and timetabling of the Panel’s relationship to the Growth Board, the insufficiencies of the Board in dealing with request from the Panel and the paper on the Panel’s Agenda to-day, entitled ‘Oxfordshire Plan 2050 – Green Belt’.

1.      CPRE continues to support the Panel’s important task of holding the Growth Board to account at this crucial time when the Board’s future activities and arrangements are under discussion and the Board is pushing on at such a rate that checking that its activities are in line with the democratic processes it should espouse is particularly difficult for District Councillors, let alone the general public, to follow.  The timetabling of the Panel’s meetings, only a few days before Growth Board meetings, must make it hard for considered papers to be prepared by the Panel for the Board’s detailed discussion.  CPRE advocates that the Panel review its timetable for meetings, to give itself more time to present considered documents to the Board which the Board would find it hard to avoid proper responses.  A subcommittee could be appointed to deal with matters of unexpected urgency.  The volume of business is so great at present that the Panel could consider more frequent meetings.  Otherwise, discussion of topics will continue to be limited by the time constraint of two hours’ meeting duration.

2.      CPRE is disappointed at the Board’s poor response to the Panel’s proposal that it ‘create a separate list of key consultees within the Oxfordshire Plan 2050 (JSSP) consultation process, CPRE to be added to this list of key consultees.  We all know that there is a ‘wider consultation list including CPRE’ – but we also know that this will not guarantee that the Board will consult crucial stakeholders in timely fashion in respect of all matters in which they are expert.  CPRE and all matters of planning are inextricably linked. The Panel is asked to pursue the matter energetically with the Board.

3.      Although all matters raised with the Panel at its last meeting were greeted enthusiastically by the Panel, for which CPRE is most grateful, it appears that the second matter we raised has not been pursued with the Board;namely, our recommendation that ‘a clear priority be given for really affordable living accommodation, with suitable density and sustainability, over provision for employment on all brownfield land.’  I remind the Panel that we accepted that ‘current local plans can trump some of this, but it (our proposal) should be written in stone now from when the local plans come to an end, and the City and District Councils be asked to agree to seek to implement it as far as possible from now on’.  This is surely something which a JSSP should address, and we ask the Panel to pursue it strongly in that light.  It clearly relates importantly to comments in the next paragraph.

4.      Concerning the Green Belt paper from the Growth Board, we would emphasize the importance of preventing urban sprawl, the essential characteristics of openness and permanence, and the five purposes listed as points a to e in the paper.  The 1955 Act setting up Green Belts made it clear that ‘within urban areas thus defined (being surrounded by a Green Belt), every effort should be made to prevent any further building for industrial and commercial purposes’, thus creating ‘a demand for development of additional land for housing’.  There is full employment in Oxfordshire, yet the City’s current Local Plan, despite saying that housing is its number one priority, is preventing conversion of redundant shops and offices to housing but allocating yet more land for unneeded employment which could be used for housing instead.   The Growth Board’s purposes stress growth in such a way, and without proper input from the public or even District Councillors, that presents great dangers of accelerating house-building, even including mixed development, in the Green Belt.  I remind members of the Panel that a CPRE opinion survey using a large sample of Oxfordshire residents living in the City, towns and the countryside, showed that 75% believed that the Oxford Green Belt ‘should remain open and undeveloped, and building on it not be allowed’, whereas only 12% believed ‘there could be justification for building on it’.  Oxfordshire will, if growth continues to be a priority, require not only extra protection given to the Oxford Green Belt but further green belts created for other county towns.  Green Belts give great environmental advantages for the health and well-being of residents but are essentially a planning tool to be ignored in Oxfordshire at its peril.  We ask the Panel to persuade the Growth Board to use all these facts in their further consideration of Green Belts in Oxfordshire’.

Sue Haywood representing Need not Greed Oxfordshire asked the following question:

‘Need not Greed Oxfordshire would like to ask the Scrutiny Panel whether it is satisfied that appropriate democratic processes are in place, and being applied, to guide development of the Oxfordshire Plan 2050.  I have five brief examples I would like to bring to your attention by way of illustration:

·           The recent Joint Declaration of Ambition between HM Government and Local Partners (which, as far as we are aware, did not go through any local council committees) appears to commit Oxfordshire to being part of the "economic engine" for the UK, with Arc-wide growth targets and effectively pre-determining the Plan’s consultation outcomes. 

·           The Growth Board agenda next week includes the election of a representative to the Oxford-Cambridge Arc Executive Committee, without any accompanying documentation or any explanation of the proposed governance structures or terms of reference, and again, with no apparent discussion or mandate at appropriate local council committees.

·           The Oxfordshire Plan document currently out for consultation differs from the draft signed off by local councils, yet at the time of that sign off, some councillors were not provided with an opportunity to introduce changes they had wanted to make.  We should say that we are not necessarily opposed to all the changes made but it does raise serious questions about who made these changes and on what authority, and what judgement was applied to decide whether these constituted major or minor changes.

·           The forthcoming Growth Board meeting agenda pack is minimal, and there seems to be an increasing reliance on verbal reports, and a failure to make sub-committee minutes available.

·           At the last meeting, the Growth Board appeared to dismiss Scrutiny’s request for more effective communication between Leaders and councillors, saying that they had ‘already established clear communication with their other council members", yet the Scrutiny Panel had clearly identified this as a continuing concern and our understanding from local councillors is that this remains the case.

Bearing these examples in mind, if the Scrutiny Panel now considers there to be serious flaws in Growth Board and Oxfordshire Plan 2050 processes, we would be grateful to know what you consider could be done to address this?’

In discussion about the issues raised the Panel commented:

1.      The issues raised by the questioner were noted, and would be considered and captured as part of the Panel’s response to the Oxfordshire Plan 2050 consultation.

2.      Government policy on Green Belts was set out in the National Planning Policy Framework, (NPPF) but it was open to local planning authorities to take a view on how the framework was applied.

3.      That objectives of growth and sustainability were not exclusive

4.      That it recognised and understood the concerns raised by CPRE in respect of the timings of its meeting.  Officers worked very hard to produce reports in the time available and it was felt that the arrangements were the best they could be in the circumstances.

5.      That it noted that HM Government had published the Joint Declaration of Ambition with regard to growth in the Oxford to Cambridge Arc, and it shared the concern that the declaration did not appear to have been through any local council committees. The Panel also expressed reservations that there was a lack of background information in the Growth Board agenda to the appointment of a representative to Ox-Cam Arc Executive Committee.

6.      That it noted the apparent differences between the issued Oxfordshire Plan 2050 consultation document and that signed off by local councils. The Panel, nevertheless, recognised that in relation to such a document it was customary to delegate the making of minor amendments to officers. This issue would, however, be explored as part of a later agenda item.

After a further detailed discussion, the Panel agreed that the Chair of the Growth Board should be invited to attend the next meeting to answer questions relating to:

·           The amendment of the Oxfordshire Plan 2050 consultation document after signing off by the Councils

·           The lack of substantive reports on the Growth Board Agenda including role and rationale for the appointment of a GB member to the Arc.

RESOLVED: That the Chair of the Growth Board be invited to attend the 30May 2019 meeting of the Scrutiny Panel.