Watlington Relief Road Timeline
June 2024
Oxfordshire County Council planning authority confirmed in June that the public consultation on the WRR planning application R3.0010/24 had closed. It received many objections, including from statutory consultees. The planning application was submitted missing a lot of information without which the effects of the scheme on the environment could not be understood. The planning authority has issued a Regulation 25 letter to the applicant which is a formal request to submit missing information, some of which requires additional work. A second period of consultation would be held before the application was considered.
December 2023
A planning application by Oxfordshire County Council to build a Watlington Relief Road was submitted on 14th December 2023 to the County Council’s independent planning authority. It has to be validated, and given a reference number. The planning authority then holds a statutory 30-day public consultation.
The planning authority takes into consideration all responses and whether the proposed development supports current planning and transport policies and should be approved, or if there are material considerations why it should be refused. A report is prepared by a planning officer with a recommendation and reasons why.
Planning applications of this magnitude, and of this type – a road capacity scheme – are decided by Oxfordshire County Council’s Planning & Regulation Committee. The application is a departure from the Development Plan meaning it conflicts with some policies, which is a further reason for a decision to be made by the P&RC, after hearing from interested parties and considering the planning officer’s report.
Spring 2023
The Council held an online public consultation on a proposed Watlington Relief Road from 20th February for the minimum statutory 28 days and two drop in events. The consultation was for the public to “contribute to how the scheme can work best for all those who will travel along the relief road.”
In March, it launched a consultation on: Request for Scoping Opinion for the proposed new Watlington Relief Road and new associated junctions. This relates to the environmental impacts of the scheme, which it is accepted are too great to be dealt with through the normal planning process. An Environmental Impact Assessment has to be prepared, to the scope agreed with the planning authority in its Scoping Opinion. An Environmental Statement prepared under The Town and Country Planning (Environmental Impact Assessment) Regulations 2017 must accompany a planning application.
The Council gave a timeline of a planning application in Summer 2023 with construction commencing in Spring 2024 subject to planning approval.
Spring 2021
In March 2021, Oxfordshire County Council consulted with key stakeholders, not the public, on an Options Assessment Report (OAR) on a Watlington Relief Road. The report considered if there was a need to build a road. A list of ten stakeholders were consulted, including two developers and one local resident.
Consultees were given the report, an A4 sheet and two weeks to respond. 77 queries were raised. 22 were not answered.
At its Cabinet meeting in September 2021, the Council agreed to progress to Stage 2. The most expensive and environmentally damaging proposed bypass route was approved. This was contrary to its own Stage 1 OAR, recommending two routes were progressed. Cabinet agreed to ”public engagement on preferred options” and if funding risks emerged these would be reported back to Cabinet. Neither happened.
November 2018
A relief road for Watlington was awarded £7.1m funding (increased from an initial £1.2m) from the Oxfordshire Housing and Growth Deal in November 2018.
ORAA comment – has Oxfordshire County Council met requirements for public consultation?
For road schemes, the Department for Transport requires “public consultation on potential options” and “public consultation feedback” at an early stage, as part of Stage 1. Public consultation once a preferred option has been chosen, as was the case with a WRR, is too late. There is no opportunity for stakeholders, including the public, to shape the options, which is the point of Stage 1 public consultation. The county council compounded this when it ran a statutory 28 day public consultation during Stage 2 by asking the public to “contribute to how the scheme can work best for all those who will travel along the relief road.” The county council has not published a report detailing how it incorporated feedback from the Spring 2023 public consultation.
Oxfordshire County Council’s Cabinet has bypassed proper public engagement by progressing with a preferred option to Stage 2 without first allowing the public to comment on and suggest potential options.
A planning application to build a relief road is Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) development that requires an Environmental Statement to accompany the application. The EIA process puts great importance on public participation. This requires information to be made available to the public at the early stage. Not only was the public consultation in Spring 2023 held with no information provided on traffic modelling or environmental surveys, the planning application submitted in December 2023 was also missing information needed to consider the environmental impacts of the scheme.
