Watlington Relief Road Consultation Timeline
January 2024
A planning application by Oxfordshire County Council to build a Watlington Relief Road is expected in early 2024. Details on how to object will be provided on this page once the application goes live.
The planning application is made to the independent regulatory planning arm of the county council. Once it has been registered, the county’s planning authority holds a statutory 30-day consultation to which the public can respond if they support or object to the application.
The planning authority considers if the application meets the most up-to-date policies. Road capacity schemes, which is what a WRR is, are considered to generate new demand. The central aim of transport policy is to cut car trips by 25% by 2030 and for transport to be net-zero by 2040.
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. If a planning application is made, the environmental impacts of the scheme are too great for it to be dealt with through the normal planning process. 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
The project was awarded £7.1m funding (increased from an initial £1.2m) from the Oxfordshire Housing and Growth Deal in November 2018.
Has Oxfordshire County Council met DfT 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 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.” No report has been published on how public feedback from the March 2022 consultation has been taken into account.
Clearly Oxfordshire County Council has not allowed the public to be properly involved in commenting on and suggesting potential options. Its Cabinet have clearly bypassed the public by progressing with a preferred option to Stage 2 before there has been proper public engagement.
