A NORTH Oxfordshire green councillor is 'disappointed' a district council did not support his motion calling on it to consider reviewing housing need figures.

The Oxfordshire Growth Needs Assessment (OGNA) is intended to help the Oxfordshire councils identify the right level and distributions of housing and employment over a 30-year period to 2050.

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This has been dubbed the 'Son of SHMA' by Green Cherwell District councillor Ian Middleton, referring to the Strategic Housing Needs Assessment which has previously been used to justify developments on green belt land in his district ward in East Kidlington and elsewhere.

At Cherwell's full council meeting on Monday evening, Mr Middleton brought a motion forward calling for the council to back seeking a second opinion on OGNA figures.

Mr Middleton said the council risked 'painting itself into the same corner' with 'unrealistic' and 'unachievable' growth targets and warned that adopting these new figures could lead to even more green belt and rural spaces being lost around Banbury and Bicester.

Speaking after the meeting, Mr Middleton said: "If unrealistic growth figures are baked into the plan now, we face a similar situation to that created by the SHMA which received significant criticism for inflating housing need by as much as 40 per cent and led directly to the imminent destruction of large areas of green belt in Oxfordshire.

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"We need an urgent independent peer review of this assessment before moving to the next stage of the consultation process.

"The OGNA could well be the 'Son of SHMA' giving developers, landowners and planning authorities a charter to ride roughshod over local feeling yet again, forcing through development over and above any actual need in the pursuit of growth for its own sake."

The revised demographic projections presented in the OGNA show a higher need for 3,386 homes per annum - equivalent to 101,580 homes over the 30-year period.

This level of housing provision would support population growth of 25.4 per cent across Oxfordshire over the 30 years - equivalent to an additional 183,000 people.

The local housing need changes over time, and OGNA states the latest data for 2021 shows a slightly lower need for 3,358 dwellings per year and 3,291 dwellings per annum. This would equate to a need for 98,730 homes.

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Conservative Cherwell council leader councillor Barry Wood said in the meeting: "Whether or not there is a peer review remains to be determined and if we say here now, 'yes we are in favour of it', we are in danger of being the only ones that want to do it and then be pressurised into paying for that.

"I don't think that is so. All the councils need to work together."

The motion was lost with both Labour and the Conservatives voting against.

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