Your chance to comment on new council headquarters
Residents, business and organisations across South Oxfordshire and Vale of White Horse districts are invited to have their say on proposals for a new building in Didcot, which will include office space acting as the councils’ shared headquarters.
South Oxfordshire District Council has submitted a planning application for the building, and the plans are now available to view online and for people to leave their comments.
The district council’s own Planning department will determine the planning application. As such, the council has been observing strict and careful internal procedures to ensure the Planning officers involved in reviewing the application are independent from council staff working on the project.
The application will ultimately be debated and determined in a public meeting of the council’s politically representative Planning committee. The comments made during the planning application consultation will be presented as part of the report being considered at that committee meeting.
A current masterplan for the wider Didcot Gateway site will support the council’s planning application. The masterplan was commissioned to set out principles and requirements that ensure all development on the site is of a consistent and high quality, and to ensure it adheres to the broader garden town principles and priorities for Didcot. Homes England owns a large section of the site and has previously submitted a planning application for 144 residential dwellings. Homes England’s planning application will also be supported by the current Didcot Gateway masterplan. If you have any comments on the Homes England application or elements of the Homes England design within the masterplan, please view the detail and respond to that separately through the Homes England planning application webpage.
Cllr Andrea Powell,the Cabinet Member responsible for the new building project at South Oxfordshire District Council, said: “The way that we work has changed dramatically following the pandemic. The plans for our proposed new headquarters address these changes to meet the needs of our staff, while also helping to regenerate the local Didcot community and take action towards our sustainability targets. It’s an exciting step to formally submit our proposed plans and we strongly encourage all residents and businesses to have their say.”
Cllr David Rouane, Leader of South Oxfordshire District Council, said: “Planning officers take their independence very seriously when determining an application of this sort to ensure there’s absolutely no conflict of interest – after they’ve made a recommendation, the council’s Planning Committee will review and determine the application in a public meeting. They will consider your comments as part of that process, and so it’s important that you review the plans and let them know what you think.”
View the full plans and have your say before 31 August 2023 on the South Oxfordshire’s Didcot Gateway webpage.
