BASE HEADER

Other

ID sylw: 108471

Derbyniwyd: 07/03/2025

Ymatebydd: Magdalen College, Oxford

Asiant : Savills

Given the significant increase in housing need, the Local Plan will need to accommodate an extra 12,975 dwellings to meet the NPPF figure relative to the HEDNA. Magdalen College, Oxford is of the view that the Councils will need to plan positively for a variety of new housing developments. Whilst the majority of new homes will no doubt be provided at new settlements and strategic growth locations, there will clearly be a new need to allocate smaller sites too. The very large allocations will likely take many years to begin to deliver due to the need to provide supporting infrastructure. Smaller allocations will have a crucial role to play in helping the Council maintain a five-year supply of housing land during the early years of the Plan before the strategic scale allocations begin to deliver.
There is a need to provide a range and choice of sites, a need for flexibility and viability considerations to be taken into account and a need for the Council to consider whether higher levels of open-market housing are required in order to secure the delivery of affordable housing and/or support economic growth.
Consequently, the College strongly supports the Council’s suggestion that it will consider, “the need for the SWLP to identify a number of small sites in order to ensure provision of a 5-year housing land supply…”.
Our clients land would be an ideal allocation for a small scale site to deliver housing on the edge of Meon Vale, a sustainable location for residential development that has already been positively assessed, both within the HELAA 2024 and the Site Allocations Plan. The ability of this site to deliver is not tied to the potential settlement at Long Marston Airfield.
The Draft Direction continues to suggest that housing site outside the Green Belt will be supported within and adjacent Built Up Area Boundaries (BUABs). This is also strongly supported in principle. However, it is important that any threshold is not overly prescriptive so as to exclude potential development sites such as our clients land at Campden Road. Any threshold should be flexible and relative to the size of the settlement.
The Draft Direction also proposes, “Reviewing, and where appropriate updating, existing adopted BUABs.” This is strongly supported provided it is done holistically alongside the allocations being made for each settlement.
The College considers that a BUAB should be prepared for Meon Vale, given the quantum of recent development here and the fact Meon Vale is now a self-sufficient settlement that could support further growth and reflect the allocation in the adopted Core Strategy for the Former Engineers Depot, a brownfield allocation for 965 new homes in Long Marston.
The BUAB should equally include the College’s land at Campden Road given how well related the site is to existing built development.
The principle of a settlement hierarchy classification is supported but it is vital for landowners, developers and the general public alike to be able to understand the methodology that will be used to classify the settlements. Furthermore, it is equally important to understand how the resultant Settlement Hierarchy is used as a basis for determining where new housing allocations are directed.
Without this information, the College simply reserves the opportunity to comment on any future evidence and policy approach in respect of this principle.