menu
menu
At the Oxfordshire County Council meeting on Tuesday 8th September, the Green group brought a motion calling on the government to ensure infrastructure provision is supported to meet the ambitious housing targets being imposed on local planning authorities. The motion was proposed by Green councillor Emma Markham and seconded by fellow Green Gavin McLauchlan.
The motion highlighted delays in adoption of infrastructure such as water and sewerage on new developments and the looming shortage of electricity capacity to meet climate change targets for heating and other systems. It asks the Leader to write to the government calling for housing targets to be aligned with infrastructure capacity and for a review of agreements to ensure appropriate development standards are being applied and infrastructure is adopted by the council as quickly as possible.
A lively debate ensued with the majority of he council agreeing that infrastructure provision should be prioritised before houses are built, although the Labour group chose to characterise this as an attempt to block housing targets. A named vote was called with all councillors voting in favour of the motion with only the Labour group voting against.
Speaking during the debate Green Group Leader Cllr Middleton said :
“Every new home needs electricity, clean water, drains and sewerage systems that can cope. Yet across the country, and particularly in Oxfordshire, those networks are already close to breaking point and not being improved. We’re told repeatedly that Britain must build more homes. But when local communities ask where the infrastructure is coming from, the answer is that statutory providers will provide, even though they and we know that in many cases they can’t and any additional capacity is years away. It is not anti-housing to say that infrastructure must come first.”
Speaking about Labour’s opposition to the motion, he added :
“We had a strong cross-party alignment on this vital issue, but the Labour group’s bizarre assertion that we should be building houses without adequate water, sewerage or electricity provision just to keep up with government targets was frankly baffling. If they really want to see more homes fit for people to live in, they would do better to lobby their colleagues in Westminster to ensure the provision of those services keeps pace with the build out of new houses. It was disappointing that instead, they chose to play politics and characterise our concerns about those issues as a wish to suppress house building which it clearly wasn’t”