Agenda item

Cabinet Member: Travel & Development Strategy

Forward Plan Ref: 2021/163

Contact: John Disley, Infrastructure Strategy & Policy Manager Tel: 07767 006742 / James Gagg, Principal Infrastructure Planner Tel: 07776 997303

Report by Corporate Director Environment & Place (CA8).

Annex 1b is published as a Supplementary Document due to its large size.

This report introduces the completed, updated first stage of the Oxfordshire Infrastructure Strategy (OxIS), which covers the identification and prioritisation of strategic infrastructure needs to 2040. It asks the Cabinet to endorse Stage 1 of OxIS and to recommend its adoption as the basis for infrastructure assessment and prioritisation in other relevant workstreams. OxIS has been undertaken as a partnership project with District Councils and other Stakeholders, and this Cabinet report follows consideration of endorsement of OxIS Stage 1 by the Future Oxfordshire Partnership on 25^th January.

The Cabinet is RECOMMENDED to

a)           Endorse the OxIS Stage 1 as the framework for assessing and identifying strategic infrastructure priorities across the County to 2040, and

b)           Endorse the use of the OxIS multi-criteria appraisal (MCA) as the basis for the on-going assessment and prioritisation of infrastructure in relevant Council workstreams.

Cabinet considered a report introducing the completed, updated first stage of the Oxfordshire Infrastructure Strategy (OxIS), which covered the identification and prioritisation of strategic infrastructure needs to 2040.  Cabinet was asked to endorse Stage 1 of OxIS and to recommend its adoption as the basis for infrastructure assessment and prioritisation in other relevant workstreams.

Councillor Charlie Hicks, Chair of the Transport Working Group of the Place Overview & Scrutiny Committee, stated that the group was planning to look at the current situation, in order to take a view as to how to achieve targets in the Local Transport and Connectivity Plan.  The intention was to bring a report to scrutiny in June and then take the issue to Cabinet.

Having looked at the Infrastructure Strategy in that context, Councillor Hicks believed that it did not meet the priorities in the LTCP and might make the targets more difficult to achieve.  In particular, there was no mention of reducing car journeys.  He asked Cabinet not to agree the recommendations until the scrutiny committee has reported.  If they did agree the recommendations, he asked that they say when the scoring system and targets can next be reviewed.

Councillor Duncan Enright, Cabinet Member for Travel & Development Strategy, responded that the Infrastructure Plan was not in opposition to the aims of the LTCP, they just were not entirely in synch.  The important advantage in OxIS was that the district and city councils were involved and working towards the same priorities as the county.

The projects listed were only those from existing local plans.  The decision today was not to adopt those but to approve the framework provided by OxIS which was broadly in line with the Alliance’s objectives.

Cabinet Members raised a number of issues as follows:

·         The latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report emphasised that a change of focus was needed from growth to wellbeing.

·         Future plans needed to determine how to remain resilient in the face of the effects of climate change.

·         The Plan needed to reflect the priority of tackling inequality.

·         The scoring system was weighted towards prioritising growth more than environment for example.

The Chair, as Oxfordshire County Council representative on the Future Oxfordshire Partnership and Chair of the Infrastructure Subgroup, assured Cabinet that they were aware of the difficulties with the definition of growth and they will be looking at that.  In this plan the growth referred to was the existing plans for housing which needed certain infrastructure to make them viable.

The Chair proposed that Cabinet adopt the recommendations on the understanding that she will take the points made at this meeting back to the Future Oxfordshire Partnership.  This was agreed.

RESOLVED to:

a)           Endorse the OxIS Stage 1 as the framework for assessing and identifying strategic infrastructure priorities across the County to 2040, and

b)           Endorse the use of the OxIS multi-criteria appraisal (MCA) as the basis for the on-going assessment and prioritisation of infrastructure in relevant Council workstreams.