Agenda item

Chair's announcements

To receive any announcements from the committee chair and general housekeeping matters.

Minutes:

Chair’s Address to CEAC 3rd August 2020

 

Climate change has not gone away during Covid19. Uncommonly large hurricanes have hit Texas and Florida so early in the hurricane season; Italy and Spain hit record high temperatures in last week’s heat wave; and Southern France and California are ablaze.

 

Meanwhile in South Oxfordshire the emerging Local Plan 2035 has been in inspection for 3 weeks and there will be a summing up on Friday by the Inspector, Mr Jonathan Bore.  

 

The Guardians of South Oxfordshire is a group of councillors and members of the community speaking up for nature, for the wellbeing of existing and future residents of the district, and for action on climate change. We have contributed to most of the hearings sessions conducted by Mr Bore, and have found him to be sympathetic and concerned for the future of our District.

 

Nevertheless, where we consider the plan to have fatal failings, it is possible that Mr Bore will find the plan sound, with amendments, in terms of the very loosened-up planning law that we now work to. This is worrying for those of us concerned that a 50% increase in housing is exaggerated, when our population is set to rise by only 10%; unsafe as it will create large greenhouse gas emissions in construction and operation of the homes; illegal in terms of the requirement for a speedy reduction in greenhouse gases, and insecure as it takes land from wildlife and farming when the natural world is collapsing, and food security considerations demand that we grow more food locally.

 

Mr Bore was receptive to concerns over carbon emissions and nature recovery. I explained what I myself have only newly learned, that we are, in SE England, the custodians of most of the world’s chalk streams, and much of the world’s chalklands. Chalk makes up our Areas of Oustanding Natural Beauty (AONB). Outside Britain it is found only in France, Texas, Greenland and Asia. We are the custodians of unique ecosystems that should not be destroyed.

 

He invited me to write some words on how to achieve environmental improvements, and he encouraged planning officers to work with our committee to improve our environmental and climate change policies.

 

However, we must be cognisant that the new plan has very high targets, 10,000 homes more than we are working to at the moment (that is 3 Wallingfords), and the minute it gets adopted our housing land supply will drop from 10 years to 5 years. That means we can show that for only 5 years will developers be likely to build to our targets. If they slow the rate of build, perhaps because the housing market dips, then the ‘housing land supply’ is said to fail and developers can make speculative applications for even more development land.

 

We have suffered this enough in South Oxfordshire. Speculative development has created permissions for 16,000 homes in-train to be built, double the number we can even fill according to the Office of National Statistics.

 

The plan allocates land for 40,000 homes (10 new Wallingfords), land which cannot be unallocated; this will be catastrophic for South Oxfordshire. We at CEAC will do what we can to improve the climate and environmental policies, but these will not be enough to protect our district from environmental destruction.

 

 

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South Oxfordshire District Council
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