Issue - meetings

Following the launch of the Oxford Cambridge Arc Spatial Framework policy paper in February 2021, the Ministry for Housing, Communities and Local Government launched the first of three proposed consultations.  This first consultation focussed on ‘Creating a Vision for the Ox-Cam Arc’ and the proposed scope of the sustainability appraisal.

Cabinet received a report that set out the context of the consultation and the proposed response from the Council. The draft response was attached to the Cabinet report.

RESOLVED –

(1)               That the draft response to the Oxford Cambridge Arc consultation be agreed.

(2)               That authority be delegated to the Corporate Director for Planning, Growth and Sustainability, in consultation with the Leader of the Council, to submit the final response to the Ministry for Housing, Communities and Local Government, incorporating any further changes agreed at the Cabinet meeting.

The Oxford to Cambridge Arc had been conceived in 2017 as a nationally strategically significant knowledge-intensive economic region offering huge potential for future economic growth. The economic prospectus for the Arc had been launched in October 2020. Local authorities in Buckinghamshire had been party to local government discussions about the Arc up until August 2020 when Buckinghamshire Council withdrew its support for the Arc and left the Arc Leaders Group (along with the University and Local Enterprise Partnership) over concerns about the central imposition of housing targets and marginalisation of the views of individual councils.

Following the launch of the Oxford Cambridge Arc Spatial Framework policy paper in February 2021, the Ministry for Housing, Communities and Local Government launched the first of three proposed consultations in August 2021.  This first consultation focussed on ‘Creating a Vision for the Ox-Cam Arc’ and the proposed scope of the sustainability appraisal.  The consultation aimed to support the Government in producing a vision for the Spatial Framework, and therefore, guide the area’s future growth to 2050. Buckinghamshire was included in the consultation content that made up the Arc geography.

The Cabinet report set out the context of the consultation and the proposed response from the Council. The draft response was attached to the Cabinet report.

RESOLVED –

(1)               That the draft response to the Oxford Cambridge Arc consultation be agreed.

(2)               That authority be delegated to the Corporate Director for Planning, Growth and Sustainability, in consultation with the Leader of the Council, to submit the final response to the Ministry for Housing, Communities and Local Government, incorporating any further changes agreed at the Cabinet meeting.