Didcot Green Infrastructure Strategy

South Oxford District Council and Vale of White Horse

2023-2024

Arkwood were commissioned to develop a Green Infrastructure strategy for Didcot Garden Town in Oxfordshire, setting out a robust plan for green and blue infrastructure and public art enhancement, while also guiding the process of embedding planning for green infrastructure into the delivery of the Garden Town Project. Elements of the strategy include making green spaces more accessible and inclusive, as well as making Didcot a better connected, greener, and healthier place to live. We will be proposing a number of short term, medium term and long term implementations to develop a holistic action plan for the green infrastructure strategy. As with many of our other projects, we will be making the town more resilient to the effects of climate change and to benefit wildlife by providing options that will increase biodiversity net gain and improving existing habitats.

The strategy describes a series of principles that should underpin future provision, including an assessment of the ecosystem service flows that stem from green infrastructure and how these might be generated in Didcot through an enhancement of provision. The Strategy also focuses on green infrastructure connectivity, benefits for place-making and culture, health and wellbeing, deprivation and poor life-chance and climate change and biodiversity resilience.

The Didcot Garden Town Delivery Plan identifies a number of priorities for the emerging Garden Town, principal amongst which is a proposal that an enlarged Didcot should be a “super green town.” Strengthening and enhancing open green space across the town was identified as a project to secure this outcome. Didcot is one of England’s designated Garden Towns and will experience a population growth of 79% (in relation to its 2011 population) by 2031.

The Arkwood team undertook a detailed assessment of the contextual information that would inform the development of the strategy including national planning policy, council Corporate Plans, Local Plans and comprehensive suite of adopted policies and strategies influencing green infrastructure design and provision. This work was complemented by detailed fieldworks across the whole of Didcot to identify areas of the town with a deficiency of GI provision and to present opportunities to enhance GI capacity and resilience in response to development pressure and the impacts of the climate change and biodiversity emergencies. The provision of good quality green infrastructure needs to keep pace with the increase in Didcot’s population so that the social, environmental and economic benefits of ecosystem service flows (such as health and wellbeing benefits, air quality benefits and carbon sequestration benefits) generated by green infrastructure continue to be enjoyed by the Town’s increasing population.

Substantial land use changes such as the transformation of farmland into urban neighbourhoods and the de-industrialisation of sweeping tracts of land, will fundamentally change the landscape. Consequently, Didcot will see major opportunities to enhance its green infrastructure and to embed new greenspaces into the fabric of the Garden Town as well as to connect greenspaces via active travel links and greenways.

The Strategy makes recommendations for green infrastructure enhancements in Didcot and establishes a series of short, medium and long-term proposals to deliver these together with broad costs estimates and resourcing requirements. Potential sources of funding for these enhancements were also identified. Didcot’s Green Infrastructure Strategy was adopted by South Oxfordshire District Council and Vale of White Hose District Council in the summer of 2024. A project to implement the Strategy’s recommended project list is now being implemented by Didcot Garden Town.

• GIS Mapping and analysis

• Landscape Strategy

• Strategic Planning