One Ring to Rule Them All

We discussed disconnectedness of our business areas and the problem of silo-working. There was general agreement that DOUGHNUT ECONOMICS could bring all of Oxfordshire’s complex systems into a coherent single framework. Purpose-driven growth in retrofit, nature restoration, and regenerative food production was posited. Work should shift to these areas into which innovatory practices can be diffused.

Survival and Zero Carbon

MOST IMPORTANTLY, Pete Sudbury, County Council Cabinet Member said we had urgently to get to zero carbon and this should be the focus of all that we do. We should Tell The Truth about Climate Change. Sue Roberts said the Wellbeing of Future Generations (Wales) Act of 2015, has Wales gauging all it does in that light — it has led to the cessation of all major road-building.

Oxfordshire is well-positioned to lead on zero carbon as the purpose of its economy. Oxford University has a close zero carbon target plus a target for 10% biodiversity net gain. Kate Raworth, the founder of Doughnut Economics works there. Oxford Brookes University has Prof Rajat Gupta and his street-by-street retrofit work.

The Pathway to Zero Carbon Oxfordshire (PAZCO) adopted by all local councils aims for 60% of our food to be grown locally. As supply chains falter and climate change makes food scarce and pricey, it is vital that we look to our basic needs. PAZCO does not include Scope 3 emissions such as the construction of new buildings which in itself will use up the major part of Oxfordshire’s Carbon Budget to keep us below 1.5degC.

Circular, Cyber, Citizens

A CIRCULAR ECONOMY should be employed ‘making-do and mending’ and focussing on a sector-led economy for the good of the people, retrofitting 10,000 homes a year. This requires government investment and the diverting of workers and materials from newbuild to retrofit (particularly as the housing crash intensifies).

Cyber disinformation and disruption has already damaged our 15-min city and Low Traffic Neighbourhoods work. To include all parts of society we need greater democratisation and CITIZENS’ ASSEMBLIES. We have an unusually strong citizenry aimed at zero carbon, organised through the Community Action Groups.

Oxfordshire to Lead the World?

All of this needs a strong mechanism with complex systems thinking at its heart. Doughnut Economics is being taken on by Oxford City Council, but it should be fully backed, and made county-wide. Amsterdam is a good example of a Doughnut Economy city.

Doughnut Economics is ‘agnostic’ about growth: some ‘green’ sectors should grow; but growth in GDP is neither indicative of wellbeing nor needed for prosperity. The group was uncomfortable with the framing of the FOP vision as being of a ‘world-beating economy’ for Oxfordshire. That is not the main tenor of the FOP vision, which focusses on the Wellbeing of Oxfordshire Residents.

Oxfordshire should lead however, not by ‘responding’ to economic ‘drivers’, but with Oxfordshire’s zero carbon economy driving England’s economy, and hence the World’s.

Oxfordshire Plan 2050

There are more housing plans for Oxfordshire, England!!! Oxfordshire Plan 2050 (OP50) has been released for consultation.

OP50 boasts of being the only 30-year plan in the country. Never before has this been done: guessing how our world will look in 30 years time. Only Oxfordshire, of all the areas asked by Government, is still making such a plan.

OP50 binds us into a building even more housing; between 16,000 and 68,000 in Oxfordshire on top of those already committed. The land allocated to these further excessive housing numbers will be blighted forever.

Meanwhile, we cannot build to the high targets set and so we lose our ‘5y housing (land) supply’. Speculators are let loose to gobble up more of the land. And yet we have already planned more than enough homes for our expected population in 2050; and enough for 3 new homes for every new household to the mid-30s.

I am credited with turning the vision green for OP50 from my one year on the advisory group. Could OP50 scrap its unneeded housing allocations? Could it plan for the restoration of nature? Could it plant to make our existing homes zero carbon and safe from storms?

The Oxford-Cambridge Arc

Oxfordshire feeds into the Oxford-Cambridge Arc of Development. A million homes and a million jobs are to go into the Arc. Workers will need to be dragged into the ‘over-heated’ area from all over the country and from abroad; the opposite of ‘levelling up’.

Boris Johnson says, “investing in areas where house prices are already sky high [drives] prices even higher and you force more and more people to move to the same expensive areas.”

Conservatives do not want this. Libdems do not want this. Greens do not want this.

But the juggernaut of development has a life of its own, fuelled by developers; and in the desperate reaching up to the Holy Grail of Gross Domestic Product. The aim is to double GDP in the Arc.

Please take a look at this alternative consultation produced by the Stop the Arc group. https://tinyurl.com/5MinArcSurvey

Pass it on to your friends — we need a clear picture of what Oxfordshire residents actually want.

2020 is squaring up to be the hottest year ever recorded in the UK, and whilst temperatures of 35ºC and over have been seen in other years for one or two days, it is unprecedented that they continue as they are doing right now, over several days.

Climate breakdown has not gone away during Covid-19. And yet the government’s Green Recovery from the pandemic has morphed into Build Build Build. No longer is there a pretence of building for ‘much-needed homes’; the housing minister, Robert Jenrick, with his dubious levels of probity, has been forcing a massive expansion in development explicitly for economic recovery.

How does this work exactly? Here in South Oxfordshire only 8000 of the 40,000 homes planned between 2011 and 2035 can be filled, according to the Office for National Statistics. Fine, so we are building 32,000 homes to add to our empty-home stock purely to keep builders building? I don’t think so. As interest rates go negative once again, international investors can raise debt (out of thin air) with minuscule interest payments, buy up our land and our homes and leave them empty for price growth, or fill them with tenants to pay the debt they have raised. We are paying international investors to own our land. We have become bond slaves in our own homes.

Mr Jenrick and Mr Johnson are now busily tearing up what miserable planning law remains after the last bonfire in 2012. You will of course recall that Robert Jenrick forbade our district council from doing what it was specifically elected to do, withdrawing the exaggerated Local Plan 2011 to 2035. We have been directed to force this through inspection and to adopt it.

The Guardians of South Oxfordshire is a group of councillors and members of the community speaking up for the wellbeing of existing and future residents of the district, for nature, for our farming industry, and for action on climate change. We have had the most gruelling month in the quasi-legal setting of Hearings on the Local Plan. At the first of these, I asked Mr Bore, the inspector, how he could be independent when the Secretary of State insists that the plan cannot fail. He assured me that he was. So that is good.

And yet at his summing up on Friday (just as Chobham exploded into an inferno) he showed no intention to protect our now lost Green Belt, and gave the green light to further building in Wallingford. Where Wallingford had been allocated 15% more homes, which the thousand to come to our west side already exceeds, he altered our future by adding three words to the Plan. No longer “15%” but now “a minimum of 15%.”

The Guardians know that nearly doubling the housing in South Oxfordshire, over the next 15 years is unnecessary; it is unsafe as it will create large greenhouse gas emissions in construction and operation of the homes; it is probably illegal in terms of the Climate Change Act, and it creates insecurity: it takes land from its natural state where it provides us with pollination, flood control, local climate control, and much more; and from farming just when food security considerations demand that we grow more food locally.

Mr Bore listened patiently whilst I explained that we in South East England are the Custodians of most of the world’s chalk streams, and much of the world’s chalklands. Chalk makes up our Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONBs). Outside Britain it is found only in France, Texas, Greenland and Asia. We are the Custodians of unique ecosystems that should not be destroyed.

But Mr Bore has allowed no changes to our environmental or climate policies in the Local Plan.

The new plan insists that 23,500 of the 40,000 homes are built by 2035. This is 10,000 homes more than we are working to at the moment (that is 3 Wallingfords more). The minute the Plan gets adopted our housing land supply will drop from 10 years to 5 years. That means we can show that developers can meet our targets for only the next 5 years. 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. With Wallingford now open for speculation as we have to build a minimum of 15%, we can expect a heady time.

At Wednesday’s hearings, I and others spoke up for Wallingford, explaining how we are struggling to accommodate rapid growth. During the plan period, Wallingford will grow by 1500 homes, almost a half, one new home for every two we had in 2011. So far, since then, we have built 400 and already our health centre if over-stretched, primary school children are being bussed out of town, and Wallingford School is turning away our own children.

We Guardians were speaking against top development lawyers, Queen’s Councils or ‘silks’ who twisted the truth for their paymasters, leaving the Guardians wondering “Is there a special circle of hell reserved for developers’ lawyers”?

Wallingford is of immense historical importance. It has been continuously settled since the iron Age; it has the finest surviving mediaeval urban townscape of any small town in the county; St Alfred’s Saxon fortifications are unique in their completeness. The town was of high importance from the Norman conquest to the Civil War, with only the Tower of London and Windsor Castle equal to our Wallingford Castle. However, the need to protect this, and Wallingford’s nationally important landscape as a setting for the AONBs, seemed to cut no ice with the Inspector.

We’ve seen a massive rise in traffic since 2011 and can expect more to come, with the bypass overloaded and air pollution still killing perhaps 20 Wallingfordians a year. Plans have been refused in other places before now on air pollution grounds, but not here where the goose lays golden eggs for international investors.

Our ancient heritage means combined storm water and sewage drains, which flood our homes during flood and discharge pollutants into the Thames during drought. The starvation of funds to Local Authorities makes me wonder whether our pool and splashpad will ever re-open. Instead, we cool off in the river, taking our lives in our hands as we swim in the abundance of antibiotics, bacteria, viruses, hormones, phosphates and nitrates.

Regarding food security, we have already lost our western reaches from agriculture: two big arable fields. Farming Today last week said that the winter floods and the dry spring has decimated our wheat yield in the UK; it is down by a third. Why are we building on our precious farmland?

There are tough times ahead, and Wallingford, and South Oxfordshire, have been betrayed by a corrupt government lining the pockets of its billionaire friends.

What Covid19 has taught us is that a lot of unpleasant unrewarding jobs are unnecessary. It has shown us who the true heroes are! It has also shown us that we are not resilient to food supply shocks. We need to become much more self-sufficient, importing 20% not 50% of our food in the UK.

We need to restore nature and our soils and that means organic agriculture, agriforestry, permaculture; those sort of approaches. They are more labour intensive than chemical farming.

To make this work we need a Universal Basic Income. People need to know that they can be agile about moving to better work without losing their living, receiving say £14,000 for every single adult and £7000 for each child, unconditionally. An example of the flexibility that unconditional payments provide comes from my son. He is training as a carpenter, has his unconditional furlough money, and can take on writing work from his previous career and earn extra money, providing a needed service without impoverishing himself.

Aside from an unconditional basic income improving jobs opportunities, this crisis has shown us how many are falling through the cracks. My nephew, a skilled self-employed carpenter, has had no money for 2 months, has had to ask me to guarantee his rent on a new flat as he would otherwise be homeless, and has had to go to food banks (pending his self-employment furlough money).

And then, there is the repurposing of factories such as the car industry, part of which is busy making ventilators just now. We should not be building cars at the rate we were, and these specialists would be perfectly placed to build the air source heat pumps that our 28 million homes desperately need.

The climate emergency has not gone away. The Coronavirus emergency is now heaped up on top of it. To survive both, we must create resilience against the virus with real mitigatory effect on the climate crisis. Five things should happen urgently:

1. A Universal Basic Income. The UK Government’s measures of the 20th March 2020 to protect businesses, leaves vulnerable the self-employed, zero-hours contractors, low-paid workers and those on benefits. It provides 80% of the normal pay packet to workers, up to a maximum of £30,000 per employee per annum, if they are ‘furloughed’ from work. This is grossly unfair. Why should a highly-paid executive receive this for doing nothing at home, whilst the photocopying boy gets £9000? Everyone needs to be secure for food and shelter which could be achieved at £14,000 for every adult and £7000 for every child, a total annual bill of £850bn, plus extra of course for special needs. This money would be offset against the existing benefit system, and its massive and costly bureaucracy.

2. Food rationing. This is needed now, to ensure good distribution of food rather than the frenzied panic-buying and food-hoarding which feeds upon itself in exponential manner. We have plenty of food in the country at the moment. But we import half of it. Will shipments still come in? Will other beleaguered countries keep their food for themselves? Our own food supplies have been greatly damaged by the winter floods, with potatoes ruined in the fields.

3. Redeployment of workers. Our fruit and vegetables will lie rotting in our fields unless we find the 80,000 pickers that normally come from abroad. The NHS needs more carers. The isolated in their homes need help. And many people cannot or need not do the work they were doing. It is now, that useful work that does not breach quarantine can be set about, for example retrofitting our homes for energy efficiency. Warm, unpolluting homes provide resilience against viral infections and against global heating. We should be training and deploying people in energy assessment and advice, and in building skills to get the retrofitting of our 27 million homes underway.

4. Re-purposing of factories. Our car factories are lying fallow and should be re-purposed for building the medical equipment we need, and for addressing climate change. Car and other factories should be building air sourced heat pumps, mechanical ventilation heat recovery units, solar panel systems, wind turbines, insulation products etc.

5. Substantial government funding from the better-off. We are told that emergency funds can come only through borrowing. Why? The right way to go about this is to raise taxes substantially for higher earners. The government is wedded to its ideology of low taxes, and yet now has to accept the need for Big Government. If not through taxes, then will they be asking for a ‘Your Country Needs You’ donation system?

The Coronavirus pandemic is a huge and terrifying threat, but is it the jolt we need shake us from our complacency? The climate and nature crisis is devastating our world. Could all the powers of governance brought in to handle the virus save us from this other longer-term and more final disaster?

Do we really need to build 300,000 homes in the UK per year, as the government is pushing us to to do?

I have been working with Oxfordshire Green Party to establish the true situation with housing in the UK — (which I have written about extensively on Medium, previously).

We have uncovered six pernicious myths about housing, and six imperatives to resolve the crisis.

Six Pernicious Myths

Six Imperatives for Housing

It has chosen to ignore the National Planning Policy Framework which shows South Oxfordshire needs only 10,000 homes, and instead to push for economic growth in terms of sales of homes to non-residents: investors from overseas, second-homers, new London commuters.

The vote takes place in 2 parts, tonight, 5 working days before Christmas, at Council Cabinet, and on Thursday, 3 working days before Christmas, at full Council.

The public are permitted to address the council, to be roundly ignored. This is what I shall say to Cabinet tonight:

“I know we cannot influence your decision — it is made. But I ask, what is your vision for our County?”

“I have seen other people’s visions. The Industrial Development vision that Price Waterhouse Cooper presented to us, the Local Enterprise Partnership. It goes like this: we are a profitable County and so it is our duty to double our GVA in the next 20 years to relieve our country’s debt.” [NB GVA is GDP excluding grants and taxes].

“PwC suggest we model ourselves on Singapore. But is this your vision? An industrialised County with a swathe of development the size of Birmingham splayed up to Cambridge with the Ox-Cam road?”

“Perhaps it is. But would it work for our people, for the people that YOU serve?”

“And here comes the rub. Singapore succeeds because it is an authoritarian state. Homes are state-owned and who gets to live where is strictly controlled. Was that part of PwC’s vision? I don’t think so.”

“On the contrary we allow overseas ownership of our homes to push up UK house prices: by over a quarter in just 14 years. And the more you build to feed the market, the more voracious the market becomes.”

“The Oxfordshire Infrastructure Strategy has costed our needs at 9 billion pounds. After 8 years of building, Government has given 2% of this; £215 million in the Growth Deal. We can’t even use this paltry sum without getting the magic money tree to ‘unlock’ investment.”

“Take Watlington. It got 1.2 million pounds for a relief road. Just 11 million short. The developers are to pay the outstanding sum, from building 260 homes specified in the Neighbourhood Plan, but after funding public transport and affordable homes. Really?”

“So where do we get 9 billion? It’s easy to attract overseas money for the Ox-Cam road, putting our people further in debt. But how do we maintain our district roads — educate our children — run our health system — stop the seepage of the lower-paid into abject poverty — end the need for food banks?”

“Every home we build, over the 10,000 we need according to the NPPF, is a burden on our society. It brings a smattering of new homes bonus, or the odd ‘deal’ with government. But it overloads our infrastructure and destroys the landscape that we love.”

“Do you have trust in Government to come up, unexpectedly, with the funds? The people of our District have trust in you. They believe that you would not act to cause us harm. Please don’t.”

Now, our sacrosanct areas are being sliced up and parcelled out for the profit of landowners and developers. Soul-less estates spatter over our landscape and our citizens are robbed of their basic amenities: clean air and abundant water, and easy access to education, healthcare, beautiful landscapes and nature. Traffic filth and congestion is becoming intolerable.

Planning laws were ripped up by Cameron’s government, and replaced with the National Planning Policy Framework. In the doublespeak mode of recent administrations, this purports to give power to communities whereas all power has been taken away.

The massive number of homes here was settled by a discredited ‘Strategic Market Assessment’. Even the government minister, congratulating Oxfordshire on its push for growth, said we are building “well in excess” of our needs.

And we are. From the start date of 2011, we are to build 100,000 homes by 2031. They are not for our homeless as they will not get a look in. They are not for our young people to buy as they are too pricey. They are to increase our Gross Domestic Product for the glorification of the government and to please overseas investors. Remember, this was a market assessment not a needs assessment.

We have revisited the expected future populations for Oxfordshire from the recently-published 2016 projections from the Office for National Statistics. They show that we cannot fill 100,000 homes. Nor the 200,000 homes expected to come with the Oxford-Cambridge Expressway.

By 2031, 76,000 extra homes must lie empty, to join the 13,000 homes that were empty in 2011. (The empty homes may not be the new ones, they may be Oxford mansions or Chilterns villages from which the not-super-rich have been socially cleansed). Look at Figure 1 — it shows, by 2050, that 650,000 people will be missing from Oxfordshire; not filling the homes. Thus nearly half of homes in Oxfordshire will be completely empty (see Figure 2).

As population growth in Oxfordshire, indeed in England and the UK, is slowing, there will not be enough households to fill these homes. They must instead be bought as ‘buy-to-leave’ by investors, creating 13 ghost towns the size of Henley in what was our rural county. One a year.

The population growth needed to fill the planned homes is astronomically higher than the likely growth according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS). Oxfordshire’s aspirations continue for house-building at the same rate out to 2040, followed by a share of a million houses to be built along a massive road out to Cambridge (we’ve assumed Oxfordshire is the lucky recipient of a fifth of these houses).

Currently, the ‘market absorption’ is missing. For the past 7 years, developers were supposed to build 5000 homes a year to meet housing targets. Instead, they have exactly matched population growth, with 2100 homes per year.

It is said that we must have 100,000 homes in Oxfordshire to produce economic growth for the UK, as its highest priority county, to support 85,000 jobs. (This all in a timeframe of 20 years from 2011). Remarkably, we have achieved the goal of job delivery (40,000 new jobs) in just 7 years. But on the back of only 15,000 homes.

ONS population projections show we need only 33,000 new homes over the 20 year period, of which we have built half. Half the jobs, half the homes; good progress then towards are 2031 economic objectives.

But what of the 67,000 homes that are to be built in excess of our ability to fill them (13 Henleys)? The costly process of building them will certainly add to our GDP as the money goes round and round.

But the homes cannot be filled, and therefore, necessarily, they are ‘buy-to-leave’ or second, third, fourth homes. Doubtless the government, and Oxfordshire’s leaders, are aware of this. And this will all be economic growth in terms of houses swapping hands (unless and until there is a housing crash).

All worthy aims for economic growth in terms of house building for its own sake, but let us not kid ourselves that these homes are to house residents, current or new, in Oxfordshire.

Mismatch of population size with house-building

Oxfordshire is attempting to build 100,000 homes over 20 years from 2011–2031 following a Strategic Housing Market Assessment (SHMA) which allows for economic growth over and above natural growth. This strategy would house 250,000 new people, a 40% increase in the population of Oxfordshire from its 2011 level of 650,000, bringing it to 900,000.

The Office of National Statistics (ONS) make regular projections of population, based on recent trends in births, deaths and migration. Using their figures the realistic population of Oxfordshire in 2031, is likely to be 730,000 (using county-level data for 2014, adjusted by 2016 national data).

Oxfordshire’s plans mean that in the next 13 years we need to attract 170,000 people over and above those expected to migrate in. Without them (since 2016), we will have built four times more homes than can be filled. (Table with data for graph at bottom of article).

Housing the Homeless

But what of our homeless? According to Shelter 0.5% of the population is homeless or in temporary accommodation. Evenly spread this would be 3300 people in Oxfordshire. It would take a mere 1350 homes to house our homeless. We have overcrowded homes too, 3.3% of our homes according to SHMA, or 8500. Generously, we could provide another 8500 so that each overcrowded home could decant to a second home. Thus, to house all our homeless and the overcrowded, we need 10,000 homes. 13,000 Oxfordshire homes lay empty in 2011: a remarkable match with the number needed.

Similarly, if homeowners were enabled to downsize to smaller homes without losing capital value from savings earned over a lifetime, more than 200,000 bedrooms would become available: 73% of homes in Oxfordshire have at least one spare bedroom.

Then how many?

How many homes do we need to build? To house our expected population in 2031, relative to 2011, we need 33,000 new homes. 15,000 have been built (to date), so in the next 13 years we need only another 18,000; not another 85,000. There would be 67,000 too many homes.

How would we fill the 67,000 homes? How would we bring in 170,000 people? We must emphasise that these people simply will not exist — there are no surpluses of people elsewhere in the country. The extra people can only be brought into the county by depopulating other parts of the country, or by a massive immigration programme from abroad, counter to the express determination of our government.

THE TRAJECTORY BEYOND 2031

This housing growth trajectory from the SHMA is assumed to continue to 2040 by the Oxfordshire Infrastructure Strategy report of 2017; resulting in a further 23,500 homes in 9 years.

Thereafter, a road to be built between Oxford and Cambridge, is to be ‘paid for’ by one million homes along its route. The road runs through three counties, so Oxfordshire may receive a third of these, but let us assume a fifth (200,000 homes), in 20 years to 2050.

If all the homes were to be built and occupied, by 2050 there will be 1.5 million residents in Oxfordshire, against the actual likely population of 790,000. Population growth would be 8 times greater than expected, and the population twice as great as it is actually likely to be. Or, 700,000 people missing.

HOW CAN OXFORDSHIRE GROW?

It is the aspiration of the SHMA, and the Oxfordshire Infrastructure Strategy of 2017 (OXIS) that Oxfordshire’s economy, and hence built environment, should grow beyond the normal, competing with other counties and pulling in people from elsewhere.

Could these people come from surrounding counties, from London, from the North? This does not really work, as all counties have been obliged to set high housing growth targets, and across England there is a levelling off in population growth.

In economic terms, growth in housing is an end in itself, bringing in investment money from abroad and providing jobs in construction and hence improved GDP (but creating second homes and ghost villages — already true in Oxfordshire). What housing growth does not do is reduce the price of homes.

Developers pay high prices for land and struggle even to pay their obligations towards infrastructure, often failing to provide the hoped-for affordable housing as their margins are squeezed. They would not, and do not, flood the market with homes to bring down their cost. Thus, the house-building in Oxfordshire since 2011 has been at half the rate anticipated. In any case, the near-infinite global market of investors seeking the safe haven of buildings in England keeps prices high.

Unfortunately, the National Planning Policy Framework provides a presumption towards development in inappropriate places for unplanned housing estates, as developers can argue for planning permission if the SHMA targets are not met, as indeed they never are. Thus the unnecessary, unachievably high targets are detrimental to the proper planning of our county, the welfare of our citizens, and the protection of our natural environment.

The disparities between the official population projections and Oxfordshire’s plans are so great that is clear that our leaders are taking a huge risk with our communities, countryside and economy.

FURTHER INFORMATION

HOW DO WE SET HOUSING TARGETS?

Very high targets for house-building have been set in this country, and in Oxfordshire. All counties must use the SHMA tool, to identify how many homes are needed to accommodate existing residents better, to allow for natural population growth (the balance of births and deaths, plus net immigration), and to permit economic growth over and above natural growth.

The economic growth targets are set by collections of business-people in each county, the Local Enterprise Partnerships (LEPs). Government is attempting to make their workings more transparent and accountable. Oxfordshire’s LEP is a limited company.

Leaders of the LEPs, District, City and County Councils, and, in Oxfordshire’s case, the Universities, come together as the ‘Growth Board’ to determine housing numbers. It is the task of the District and City Councils to plan where all the new growth goes.

The anomaly that we face, is that all LEPs aim for economic growth and increased population and they set these targets high to bid for central government funding. Counties are set to compete with one another for growth. But there are only so many people in the country to share out at any one time.

In contrast, DCLG (Department for Communities and Local Government) bases its population projections on estimates of the current and projected population, published by the Office of National Statistics (ONS) which collates data on migration flows and natural growth.

DEFICIENCIES IN OXFORDSHIRE’S SHMA

The SHMA has been shown to be flawed. Compared with DCLG it prescribes:

• 28,000 homes by dint of excess industrial growth over normal trends

• 20,000 too many homes due to misinterpreted population and household formation forecasts plus double counting of new residents versus workers

• 14,000 too many homes due to double-counting of affordable homes

REFS: Strategic Housing Market Assessment for Oxfordshire

Oxfordshire SHMA Note on Local Needs March June 2017

SHMA projections were to be monitored and adjustable, but we have not seen any monitoring and adjustment taking place.

Assumptions in SHMA have already been outdated by reality — here, we have assumed 2.47 people to a home, as ONS observes and projects (as a minimum), rather than following SHMA in its assumption that household size will shrink to 2.4. (If it were to, the difference to the projections here would be trivial).

EXPRESSLY UNTHOUGHT-OUT

To plan roads to accompany our 100,000 houses (and to note deficits in all other services that support civilised life) the Oxfordshire Infrastructure Strategy (OXIS) was written in 2017. It identifies £9 billion of spending that would be required to 2040, of which approximately £250 million has been secured.

The National Infrastructure Commission is planning for a major road between Oxford and Cambridge because (to paraphrase): “people do not travel between Oxford and Cambridge and so we should provide a link to have them do so”. Not paraphrasing: “For example very few people currently live in Milton Keynes and work in Cambridge or Oxford.”

This Expressway is not a motorway as it specifically links two destinations and is probably to be a 2-lane road. It will however have more ‘levels’ (overpasses) than a normal road.

We have supposed that perhaps a fifth of the million homes to ‘pay for’ the road may end up in Oxfordshire, but it is immaterial where they go, as the lack of people to fill these homes holds true in neighbouring counties too.

Underlying data

The table below shows the underlying data used for the graph here, and in a further article on this topic. NB for a later article, the 2011 census baseline of 650,000 people in Oxfordshire was used, with the then-anticipated SHMA projection of 716,000 people in 2016.