Oxfordshire County Council’s Cabinet has published its draft budget for 2026/27. The Scrutiny Committee will review the budget in January, followed by consideration from the Cabinet. The full council will then vote on the budget in February.
The proposed 2026/27 capital programme includes:
High priority capital schemes to which funding is proposed to be allocated
£14.1m is proposed from council reserves to progress the Watlington Relief Road. The estimated project cost is £22.3m. The council would seek additional funding, to reduce the amount of OCC money required, but has not identified how. The council must ensure public expenditure across its whole capital programme is delivering maximum benefits.
The WRR is included in a budget line for Schemes that encourage and facilitate active travel and improve Oxfordshire towns. The council received strong objections last year for describing the road capacity scheme as an active travel measure. It clarified to ORAA that the budget line refers to taking traffic out of the centre to “improve market squares.” While an active travel scheme would follow construction of the road, it is not included in, or funded by, the proposed WRR project budget.
Last year, the County and District Councils confirmed to ORAA the importance of clarity on using council reserves to forward fund public infrastructure: ” The Councils are being very clear and transparent with developers when money is being used to front fund infrastructure and when County or Districts are contributing towards a piece of infrastructure. We are making sure that where we require a developer to pay for infrastructure we are ensuring that we check against the CIL regulation tests so we can be assured that the funding is valid and can be recovered” (Oxfordshire Leaders Joint Committee October 2025.)
Budget papers are not clear on how the council’s £14.1m corporate funds will be recovered. The county typically seeks full funding from grants from external sources and/or funds from developers before agreeing it will deliver major infrastructure, and take the financial risk.
Grants from external sources
The WRR was removed from the Oxfordshire Housing & Growth Deal in Q1 2024/25 as a funding partner (see below). It is not included in county’s Local Transport Plan (LTP 4, LCTP5, or Annexe C carry over between transport plans) or the county’s Oxfordshire Infrastructure Strategy. It has no external grant sources as these require a robust business case.
Developer contributions
The county has said it will seek further funding from development. This must be ‘directly related” to the WRR and ‘fairly and reasonably related in scale and kind” to it. The project’s scope must include this future development that justifies the use of council funds. This is crucial because the £14.1m council reserves are allocated with the expectation that they will be recouped through further development, to the greatest extent possible. It is also a condition of evaluating the environmental impact of the proposed scheme.
Planning application
There is no “go live” date for commencement on site for inclusion of the scheme in the council’s firm 2062/27 capital expenditure . The scheme does not have planning permission. Decisions on the planning application are not in the control of the council as applicant to build the road, and are subject to due process of planning.
WRR secured S106 & growth deal funds
The outline business case for the Watlington Relief Road sets out, the scheme has £2.564m secured in S106 with a further likely £740k.
The scheme had £7.1m secured from the Oxfordshire Housing & Growth Deal but some of this was reallocated to other schemes. £4.237m expenditure of growth deal funds has been spent on progressing the scheme (the remainder of the £7.1m was allocated to other schemes).
The Watlington Relief Road was removed from the H&GD in Q1 2024/25 as its delivery partner. The county council has proposed it will deliver the scheme. This would commit the council to building it regardless of cost — a cost that is currently unknown, as the scheme does not yet have an agreed design from which a contractor could provide a “target price” construction cost.