Oxford Green Belt Network

Oxford Green Belt Our Mission is to Preserve and Protect the whole of the Oxford Green Belt Green Belt Network
- for the benefit of all who treasure our beautiful City and for all who live
in the Green Belt and beyond.

News Update 1st April 2022

25 years ago Dr. Ian Scargill, along with a group of like-minded people, was instrumental in establishing the Oxford Green Belt Network as the public voice for the Oxfordshire Parish Councils in the Green Belt. The planning policy to designate and permanently protect the openness of the countryside in Green Belts in England was applied from 1955 onwards, but it was only in 1975 that the inner boundary of the Oxford Green Belt was confirmed, and since then the concept of the 'permanence' of this protection has been undermined by the relentless geographical expansion of Oxford City into various parts of the surrounding countryside, and this signalled the need for all the Parish Councils in the Oxford Green Belt to join together in this Network in 1997, to share Planning Information, to educate and advise on the positive benefits of the Green Belt, and to make appropriate representations to the Local Planning Authorities. More of the recent history can be read here on this website in OGBN's Spring 2022 Newsletter.

Today The defence of the Oxford Green Belt by OGBN continues as over the past 25 years the pressure has increased for inappropriate development in this belt of open countryside around Oxford. Its width has become narrower in spite of the enhancement of its beneficial uses for more public recreation, increased biodiversity and nature recovery, access by people to nature, and for sustaining the population's mental and physical health, especially during and since the Covid lock-downs. Since the publication in 2020 of the government's controversial white paper "Planning for the Future" we have been anxiously awaiting the fundamental reform of the Planning system in a new "Planning Bill", but today we understand that this may be incorporated into a "Levelling Up and Regeneration Bill" later this year. OGBN is therefore now lobbying for some expansion and definition of the beneficial purposes of the Green Belt in a new revised National Planning Policy Framework to be in time for this to guide the continued protection of the Green Belt in the emerging Oxfordshire Plan 2050.

The Oxford Green Belt Network was established in 1997 to:

Protect the setting of the Historic City of Oxford from the urban sprawl which had damaged so many other cities (though none as beautiful as ours).
Protect the individual towns and villages around Oxford from being swallowed up into an expanding City and allowing them to retain their cherished separate identities.
Preserve open countryside close at hand as a green lung for the health and enjoyment of City dwellers.

The Oxford Green Belt Network is run entirely by motivated volunteers and cannot offer any professional advisory services. However, if you need some help with a threat to the Green Belt where you live, or would like more information about what we do, or would like to help us in our work - do please contact us by e-mail at webmaster@oxfordgreenbelt.net