Oxford residents call on the Council to build more homes
“Building more affordable housing is my number one priority,” says City Council Leader in response to Oxford residents’ latest appeals.
The latest Residents’ Survey by Oxford City Council shows that only 16% of Oxonians said they feel enough decent housing is being built in the city.
899 Oxford residents took part in the recent survey, which was conducted on behalf of the Council by independent pollsters, Beehive. The survey showed residents’ satisfaction levels were, in fact, generally up slightly from last year.
For example, 70% of residents said they feel satisfied with their local area, up from 66% last year. And 54% of residents said they’re happy overall with Oxford City Council’s performance, up from 52% in 2023.
When it comes to the topic of housing, however, residents of Oxford aren’t quite as pleased with the current housing situation, and call for more to be done by the Council.
This is because according to the Office of National Statistics, the current average house price in Oxford, as of September 2024, is £494,000.
Oxford City Council had, though, drawn up a plan to tackle the city’s housing crisis which was called the Local Plan. The project planned to build 1,322 new homes in the Oxford area in a year – way above the ‘standard method’ target of 762 new homes a year. In September, however, the Planning Inspectorate said there were “no exceptional circumstances” to building more homes than the ‘standard method’ target, ending the Council’s Local Plan aims.
In more bad news for the City Council, 34% of Oxford residents stated that they felt the Oxford economy was “not doing well” and 13% said it was “really struggling”. However, the area’s economy is actually one of the UK’s fastest growing local economies.
In response to the survey’s findings, the Leader of the Oxford City Council, Councillor Susan Brown, said that the “understandable concerns about housing reinforce just what a setback the Planning Inspectorate’s decision was earlier this year.”
She continued: “Everyone who lives or works in Oxford knows how bad the housing crisis is – we are all living through it every day. Building more affordable housing is my number one priority and one that we have been delivering on.”
This comes after the news that in last month's budget, the Labour government announced an investment of £5 billion into housebuilding over the 2025-2026 period.
Other members of Oxford City Council were contacted for comment, but no responses have been received.