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Joint Design Guide

The Joint design guide is intended to help you to develop the design of any proposal and it has been prepared to guide you through all steps and stages of the design process.

The design guide is intended to assist landowners, developers, applicants, agents, designers and planners through all stages of the design and planning process to achieve high quality and sustainable development.

The design guide is a Supplementary Planning Document adopted in June 2022 and is a material consideration when determining planning applications.

The guide consists of sections covering specific subjects these are; place and setting, natural environment, movement and connectivity, space and layout, built form, and climate and sustainability. You need to consider all of these from the outset.

All applicants are required to examine their proposals against the lists of principles which we will use to assess the scheme. It is unlikely that planning permission will be granted for development proposals that do not demonstrate consistency with the principles set out in the design guide.

Both councils ran a consultation to get feedback from stakeholders and the public on the draft Joint Design Guide at the beginning of 2022. A summary of the responses can be found within the consultation report here. The comments were used to draft the final Joint Design Guide, which was adopted by South Oxfordshire District Council by its cabinet on 23rd June 2022 and Vale of White Horse District Council by its cabinet on 24th June 2022.

Supporting Documents:

Adoption statement (2022)

Consultation report (2022)

Consultation report appendix A – Survey and full results (2022)

Consultation report appendix A2 – List of comments (2022)

Consultation report appendix B – Consultation documents (2022)

Equalities Impact Assessment (2021)