Building a community for the future

We’re building a healthier community for today and tomorrow

We want Salt Cross to be a healthy and safe new village, providing a broad range of opportunities for leisure, sport, recreation and cultural activities to achieve a high quality of life and well-being for residents. 

The garden village will be a place where people of all ages and backgrounds can come together safely through shared interests and activities. The village will also provide people with the opportunity to make healthier food choices, including growing and consuming their own healthy food locally.

We’re protecting and enhancing the environment

We will ensure that the natural and historic environment of the local area is reflected, respected and enhanced wherever possible through the design, development and delivery of the garden village. 

We will avoid noise and light pollution and ensure biodiversity conservation. We will make sure that any flood risk mitigation is effective and does not increase the risk of flooding elsewhere. We will make sure that we deliver environmental benefits and prevent any harmful impacts on air, soil and water quality.

Our aim is to celebrate important heritage assets including the listed buildings at City Farm and the suspected site of the former medieval village of Tilgarsley.

We’re creating a community that thinks about how it moves

The garden village gives us an opportunity to create a sustainable community where walking, cycling, riding and public transport are the modes of choice. These travel choices will be complemented by high quality broadband provision enabling home working and reducing the need to travel. 

The garden village will, through its design, facilitate active and healthy travel within all its communities, responding to technological and societal change, whilst supporting the wider A40 corridor improvements that are currently being progressed. 

Supporting business that’s truly sustainable

We plan to develop a 40 hectare science and technology park to attract new businesses, giving them the space to grow and create high value jobs. 

The park will provide a range of employment opportunities within easy commuting distance of new homes, providing flexibility to adapt to changing economic needs. In turn a positive contribution towards the overall growth, diversification and value of the district will be achieved. 

High Quality broadband provision will ensure high rates of home-working. A range of education and training opportunities for local people to improve skills and ‘work-readiness’ will be available. 

Everything we think and do will benefit future generations

We are very proud of the innovations planned for the village and have great ambition to deliver a village that is truly sustainable and caters for the needs of its residents. The most important elements that we want to deliver are listed below.

• All new buildings to be ‘zero carbon’. 
• No fossil-fuels (e.g. oil and natural gas) to be used for space heating, hot water or cooking. 
• 100% of the energy consumption required by the buildings on-site to be generated through renewable sources such as solar PV. 
• Development to embed the concept of the ‘circular economy’ which aims to keep resources in use for longer, minimise waste and maximise re-use, recycling and recovery. 
• A focus on the protection and enhancement of the garden village’s ‘natural capital’ as a first line of defence against climate change. 
• The protection and provision of woodland and trees to reflect the wider setting of the site within the former Royal Hunting Forest of Wychwood and to enable and encourage carbon capture. 
• Delivery of around 2,200 new homes with a well balanced mix of property types, tenures and sizes to meet a broad spectrum of housing needs. 
• 50% affordable housing with a mixture of different opportunities for people to be able to rent and own their own homes with a focus on ‘genuine affordability’. 
• 110 self and custom-build opportunities distributed in small, attractive clusters across the garden village site. 
• A new science and technology park providing around 80,000m2 of modern, well designed and sustainably constructed business space set in an attractive, landscaped environment. 
• Use of new and emerging technologies to enable ‘smart’ living and working within the garden village, embedding the concept of the ‘living lab’ at the heart of the development. 
• Creation of new community meeting spaces and facilities including opportunities for ‘co-working’. 
• A new, integrated transport hub to the west of Cuckoo Lane, incorporating a park and ride with 850 parking spaces and bus priority measures along the A40, enabling convenient access in and out of Oxford. 
• A combination of new and enhanced crossing points along the A40 to include a new underpass and potentially in the longer-term a new bridge to ensure strong connectivity and integration with Eynsham, including safe routes to school. 
• A new pedestrian and cycle route to Hanborough Station along Lower Road to provide convenient and safe access by rail into central Oxford and beyond, taking advantage of future planned improvements to the Cotswold Line and Hanborough Station. 
• All new homes will have access to an electric vehicle charging point. 
• Establishment of a ‘car club’ to enable people to have regular and convenient access to ‘pool cars’ when they need it and help minimise the need for car ownership.