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Gateway 1 Self-Assessment Summary

Go back to the main Joint Local Plan 2045 webpage.

Published on 30 October 2026

Introduction

This summary has been prepared in accordance with the requirements of the Town and Country Planning (Local Planning) (England) Regulations 2026 and Government guidance on how to prepare to pass through Gateway 1 as we begin preparation of the South Oxfordshire and Vale of White Horse Joint Local Plan 2045 (JLP2).

Gateway 1 is the point at which the councils must carry out a self-assessment of our readiness to start the statutory 30-month plan preparation process. The publication of this self-assessment summary indicates the start of this 30-month period.

How we got ready to prepare a new local plan

The Government’s National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) states that we should prepare and adopt JLP2 within 30 months of this Gateway 1 self-assessment. This is to help ensure we maintain an up-to-date local plan that responds to the needs of the area and our communities.

To make sure we were ready to meet this 30-month timeframe:

  • Both Councils agreed the principle of governance to prepare JLP2 (under Section 15I of the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004)
  • Following the Council decisions to agree to prepare this new Joint Local Plan, we gave formal notice of our intention to commence plan preparation on 19 June 2026. The notice provided information on the plan area, our intention to start plan preparation on 30 October 2026, and where interested parties could view relevant documents. It was published on our websites and made available at our council offices, libraries and other locations we considered appropriate across our districts.
  • We started to gather evidence on the environmental, social and economic baseline characteristics of South Oxfordshire and Vale of White Horse and we ran a ‘JLP2 Scoping Consultation’ from 8 to 29 September 2026 (further details on these can be found below).
  • We officially started preparing a new Joint Local Plan (JLP2) for South Oxfordshire and Vale of White Horse districts on 30 October 2026.

We published a timetable for preparing the plan

Our Joint Local Plan 2045 (JLP2) timetable, first published on 19 June 2026, demonstrates when we expect to:

  • carry out the different stages and activities for preparing a plan;
  • submit the plan for its examination in public; and
  • adopt the plan.

It will help us check if we are on target to adopt the plan within the 30-month timeframe and it will also allow others to understand what stages we have successfully passed, the stage we are currently at and what stages come next. We’ll keep this updated as we make progress.

In addition to publishing the timetable on our websites, we made copies available at our council offices and other appropriate locations (a full list of the locations can be viewed on the timetable webpage).

Scoping Consultation

We ran our JLP2 Scoping Consultation from 8 to 29 September 2026, asking stakeholders, community groups and residents about their priorities for the new plan, what the plan should contain and how we should engage at future stages of plan preparation.

We notified our key stakeholders, including statutory consultees, and everyone on the Councils’ consultation database, about the launch of our consultation. We also issued a press release and publicised the consultation on our social media channels and through our Economic Development team’s newsletter.

All scoping consultation documents were available digitally on our individual Council websites, on our joint JLP2 website and on our online consultation platform (Citizen Space), with alternative formats of consultation material available on request.

To help people answer the consultation questions, we produced a scoping consultation document as both an interactive webpage and as a PDF .

Since the consultation period has ended, we are now in the process of analysing all the comments received and considering how these can help shape the content of our plan. We are also taking responses into account as we finalise our JLP2 Community Engagement Strategy.

Overall, there were 213 respondents to the consultation – all their comments were submitted digitally and more than 80% of respondents submitted responses via our consultation platform.

Next year we intend to publish a summary of main issues received during the Scoping Consultation and how we have had regard to them.

We established project management and governance arrangements

Preparing a local plan is a complex process and Government guidance advises us to review our governance and project management procedures at the onset of plan-making, to ensure we have efficient sign-off processes in place with key decision makers and are able to monitor our progress and keep work on track.

In June 2026, both Councils agreed the principle of governance to prepare JLP2 and delegated the approval of detailed governance arrangements to the Director of Legal and Democratic, in consultation with the Director of Policy and Programmes and respective Cabinet Members.

We are now preparing a JLP2 Agreement, which confirms the Councils’ intention to work jointly and collaboratively on a new local plan and sets out governance and working arrangements, including for the Joint Local Plan Members’ Steering Group and Joint All-Councillor Roundtable Meetings. These arrangements are consistent with the approach taken for the successful preparation of the first Joint Local Plan, which is currently at Examination.

Cabinets agreed to delegate decision making at the following stages of plan preparation:

  • Commencing a Scoping Consultation (complete).
  • Undertaking a self-assessment of readiness for local plan preparation (at Gateway 1) and publishing a summary document (this process).
  • Approving, submitting and publishing documents to meet requirements for Gateways 2 and 3.
  • Agreeing the content of, and commencing consultation on, proposed local plan content and evidence.
  • Consultation on the proposed local plan.

We have identified risks for the project along with mitigation measures and review processes. We will continue to undertake project-wide risk assessments and consider how to reduce or mitigate any identified risks to plan delivery.

We planned how we’ll consult on the plan

Public consultation is essential for us to understand and have regard to the thoughts of our communities and wider stakeholders.

In Summer 2026, we began preparation of a draft Community Engagement Strategy for JLP2. To help us refine its contents and our proposed approach to public engagement, we asked specific questions in the JLP2 Scoping Consultation about how our stakeholders, community groups and the public would like us to engage with them throughout the plan preparation process. We were also interested to know whether respondents had experienced any barriers to participation in previous consultations and whether they had any suggestions on how these could be overcome in the future.

We are currently in the process of summarising the responses and will present the outcomes from the Scoping Consultation to a future Joint Local Plan Steering Group meeting. This will help inform the final version of the Community Engagement Strategy, which we will draft in consultation with the relevant Cabinet Members and Directors. We plan to finalise and publish the Strategy in 2027 ahead of our next consultation.

Two key stages of public consultation on our emerging JLP2 are scheduled to take place: in June-July 2027 and March-April 2028. Interest in plan-making in South and Vale has previously been very high, and we anticipate high levels of participation during these consultation stages, with large volumes of responses to analyse. To promote wider, more effective public engagement and to help us analyse responses more efficiently, we intend to use both digital-first and traditional consultation methods.

We began scoping the content of the plan

To help us begin to identify our districts’ future needs and ambitions, we have gathered baseline data and spatial information on demographic, social, economic, housing, infrastructure, transport and environmental trends. From this, we’ve been able to build a current picture of each district. This information will be reviewed and updated as further evidence becomes available.

We will draw from our baseline report, our current Council Plans for South (The Way Ahead: Council Plan 2025 – 2029) and Vale (At the Heart of the Vale: Council Plan 2025-2029), the emerging JLP1 and the responses to the Scoping Consultation to help us develop the overall vision for JLP2. The vision will set out key aims and objectives for South and Vale over the next 15 years and will be ambitious but also reflect what the plan can realistically achieve.

To help us monitor our progress towards achieving this vision, we will need to identify a series of specific, measurable outcomes, and after that we will begin developing our high-level spatial options and locally specific policies and site allocations.

Local plan preparation must be informed by national policy and proportionate, up-to-date local evidence. We have already identified some of our evidence needs by looking at what evidence we commissioned for JLP1, what might still be relevant, what may need updating and what new evidence might be needed.

We have commissioned consultants to undertake the Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) of JLP2 and have completed project briefs for other key workstreams.

We have calculated a housing requirement for the Plan area using the Government’s Standard Method and we’re preparing project briefs to appoint consultants to undertake work to identify the need for homes of different sizes, types and tenures, as well as the future needs for employment land and other uses.

We began a Strategic Environmental Assessment

We are legally required to identify, describe and evaluate likely significant effects on the environment of implementing the local plan and its reasonable alternatives, taking into account the plan’s objectives and geographical scope.

This process will consider how community, national and international environmental protection objectives and any other environmental challenges are considered in the plan. It will help us to predict significant environmental effects and develop ways of preventing, reducing and offsetting these.

It is important we start this work early and that we are transparent about how we’re carrying out the assessment when engaging with stakeholders and communities.

So far, we have:

  • Appointed consultants (Urban Edge Environmental Consulting) to carry out the SEA of our emerging plan and met with them to agree the methodology and scope of the work, to align with the key milestones in our local plan timetable.
  • Identified other relevant plans and programmes and collated baseline evidence (as map datasets) to help us understand key issues in South & Vale.
  • Started to work on the scope and methodology for our SEA Framework and given some thought to our SEA objectives and decision-making criteria.

We plan to consult the statutory bodies (Natural England, Environment Agency and Historic England) on our SEA Scoping Report early in 2027.

How to stay up to date

We will publish updates on the preparation of the Joint Local Plan 2045 (JLP2) on our JLP2 webpages, as well as links to take part in future consultations.

To keep informed about South Oxfordshire and Vale of White Horse District Councils’ Joint Local Plan 2045 (JLP2) as it progresses, you can:

Go back to the main Joint Local Plan 2045 webpage.