Where in Thame should more new homes be built?

RESIDENTS across South Oxfordshire, who face the need for 3,600 more homes to be built across the district, on top of an adopted Local Plan for 11,400, can have their say about where the extra homes should go. Some of these additional homes need to be built in Thame, on top of those accounted for in the Thame Neighbourhood Plan.

Image courtesy of wbn.co.uk

The district council (SODC) has said that the need for even more homes between now and 2031, was identified in the publication last year of the Oxfordshire-wide Strategic Housing Market Assessment (SHMA). It is the distribution of those extra homes that the planning authority, South Oxfordshire District Council, has to decide upon and is consulting on.

Thame Town Council has previously told SODC that the town has already been allocated its ‘fair share’ of new homes, and has questioned the validity of the way the new figures were arrived at. SEE:  https://www.thame.net/archives/16024

More than 1,000 responses received in a consultation last summer, on a number of options for distributing these houses across the district, along with other evidence and guidance, have been used to produce a smaller number of revised options. People can now have their say on these new options and give their opinion on how they think the additional housing could be shared across the district.

SODC has said: “The revised options reflect the council’s belief that the majority of the new homes should be distributed in the Science Vale area and in the towns and larger villages, while a more flexible approach could be considered for our smaller villages.

“Communities in the larger villages of Chinnor, Cholsey, Crowmarsh Gifford, Goring and Nettlebed – the ones which aren’t currently developing their own Neighbourhood Plan – have also been consulted to identify where in their villages they think the best housing sites would be. ”

About Thame and the other market towns, the consultation documents, which can be read in full here: http://tiny.cc/zadxux , state:

“Our market towns and largest villages have an important role to play providing jobs and services locally, and these too would probably benefit from having a reasonable share of the additional housing growth. This would help make sure they remain viable and vibrant service centres for the district, and are able to make use of brownfield site opportunities as they come forward for re-use.”

Later in the document: “We therefore propose that most of our own housing need is allocated to these places – we would like you to think about the appropriate balance between the different areas, bearing in mind that we need to plan for at least 3,600 more new homes to meet our district’s need.

“Are there particular places within or around the market towns and larger villages where some of the additional growth could be located, how much housing would be appropriate and what positives would you like to see the development bring?”

Much is said about Chinnor’s expected contribution to providing some of the new housing: HERE

All the consultation documents and how to comment are available here: http://tiny.cc/zadxux