OXFORDSHIRE’s local leaders are committing to leave the county’s natural environment ‘in a better state than which we found it’.

The county’s Growth Board, an organisation which aims to spend £215m of Government cash on big housing and transport projects, has drawn up a ‘strategic vision’ for where it wants the county to be in the next 30 years.

This vision, a shared promise by from all local corridors of power, includes seven aims for the county.

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These include that Oxfordshire’s current residents should leave the natural environment in a better state than it currently is, and that better health and building standards should be promoted.

In recent months, the draft version of the vision has been discussed by councils and businesses across Oxfordshire, and also with local residents in surveys and with school children.

While the vision sets out commitments to create a greener and healthier future, it does not detail how these changes will be made.

And some commenters have also been critical that the plans are still primarily based around growth of the economy and housing, which they say is not in keeping with the sustainable themes of the vision.

But Emily Smith, the leader of Vale of White Horse District Council who currently chairs the Growth Board, said the document was merely meant to act as a statement of common goals between the different public bodies who hold sway over different areas of the county.

Ms Smith, a Lib Dem councillor, said: “The idea is we have a vision everyone can get behind and we can all work towards.

“It is not going to plan where we build a new school or put a new train line, but it is supposed to be a shared vision everyone in Oxfordshire can buy into.”

The details of how the vision will be implemented are set to be laid out in a more complex report being prepared by the Growth Board: The Oxfordshire Plan 2050.

Ms Smith told the Growth Board’s January meeting that more than 100 responses had been received in a survey about the draft vision.

She added 1,250 unique individuals had visited a website set up to allow people to respond to the plans.

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The Growth Board chair added that 40 per cent of people who took part were under 44 years old, which was ‘encouraging’ as it was difficult to get younger people to take part in similar surveys.

The seven aims within the vision begin with the bold claim that ‘We will be the first generation to leave Oxfordshire’s natural environment in a better state than that in which we found it.’

It also aims for the county to be carbon neutral by 2050 and ‘will be moving towards a carbon negative future’, in which the County is removing more carbon than it emits each year.

The vision aims to create a healthier and happier population, to have a sustainable and successful local economy, and to build energy efficient homes which are well designed.

On transport, it aims to create ‘greater connectivity and mobility in and between places in ways that enhance environmental, social and economic well-being’.

And lastly, it aims to create strong communities, which would be ‘rooted and flourishing, with enhanced and lasting connectedness driven by individual and community action’.

The vision also acknowledged the huge challenges the UK and other countries are currently facing due to climate change and the coronavirus pandemic.

It also says that Oxfordshire is at the heart of long term plans the Government has to boost the economy of the entire UK.

This includes the Oxford to Cambridge Arc, an area where the Government wants to encourage the growth of more jobs in science and technology.

Because of its large number of technology companies associated with Oxford University, the county is currently one of the only areas of the UK which gives more money towards the Treasury’s budget than it takes away: it is a so-called net contributor.

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The Government hopes to exploit this further in the future.

But a group of former planning and transport officials who once worked in Oxfordshire’s councils called Planning Oxfordshire’s Environment and Transport Sustainably (POETS), said more detail was needed on the pledges in the vision.

In a letter responding to the draft vision, POETS said: “We welcome many of the aspirations you set out.

“However, we are very disappointed with the overall approach. POETS believes it reads more like a public relations pitch rather than a serious attempt to address the many problems that are piling up on Oxfordshire. In the real world, choices have to be made.”

The group said claims the county would be left in a better state in the future was ‘risible’ and contested that ‘good growth’ of housing and the economy did not square up with the environmental aims of the vision.

While the Oxfordshire Growth Board is set up like a council committee, with representatives of all the county’s local councils, it does not make decisions.

Instead it allows those councils, with different political allegiances and different towns and villages in their remit, to discuss ideas which will influence them all.

The Growth Board is due to discuss changes to the vision at its March meeting.