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PRESS RELEASE 28/7/25 - Homes England refuse to explain why funding granted to bridge that breaches criteria 

Homes England have failed to respond to local residents’ concerns about the City Council’s misuse of housing funds more than two months after being told by the agency that they would receive a response within ten days. 

Members of Friends of Grandpont Nature Park wrote to Homes England on May 15th with concerns that £1.5million provided by the agency for a floodproof path out of Osney Mead has instead been siphoned off by Oxford City Council to go towards the controversial Oxpens River Bridge project. 

Oxpens River Bridge, which is opposed by almost two thousand local residents, is set to be built using  £10.3 million in public funds from two schemes designed to facilitate affordable housing, despite not enabling a single home to be built. 

£1.5million of this money has been allocated by the City Council for a new path through the Nature Park to the bridge. This money is to come from Homes England’s Housing Infrastructure Fund (HIF). 

The HIF criteria specifies that the funds can only be used for infrastructure which is “necessary to unlock new homes” (FoI Response p.30). The City Council applied to Homes England for HIF funds to build a new floodproof path out of Osney Mead on the grounds that it was “critical to the delivery of housing at Osney Mead” (FoI Response, p.76). This is because a dry flood route out of Osney Mead is required in order for residential development there to be granted planning permission. The application concluded that the paths would “provide… a safe dry route to Osney Mead at times of flood.” (FOI Response P.77)

However, this is not what the City Council are now planning to spend the money on. Instead of using the money to create a floodproof path out of Osney Mead, as per their funding bid, they have instead diverted it to a path which would run from the planned new bridge to the end of Grandpont Nature Park, stopping short of Osney Mead. To reach Osney Mead, users would still need to cross a section of towpath which regularly floods (see picture below), even after the bridge and its connecting paths have been built. The path on which the City Council now plans to spend the money will therefore not help deliver housing at all and does not provide any additional floodproofing measures; the Nature Park is already safe from flooding, as it is at a much higher elevation than the river; once users are in the Nature Park they are already on a safe dry route. The problem is reaching the Nature Park from Osney Mead, and this problem remains unresolved under the current proposals.

The residents’ letter raising these concerns, sent on May 15th, triggered an automatic response promising a response within ten days. On May 30th Homes England replied that they required an additional ten days. The residents have heard nothing from the agency since then. 

A spokesperson for Friends of Grandpont Nature Park said: “The Oxpens bridge project would destroy the only woodland on the main path through the Nature Park, the most used and most loved section of the site. It is a misuse of over £10million of public funds which are supposed to facilitate affordable housing. But on top of that, it does not even meet its own basic stated purpose, to provide a floodproof route out of Osney Mead. 

“We now know that £1.5million of the money for the project was awarded by Homes England solely to provide such a floodproof route, which the bridge and its connecting paths utterly fail to do. The use of this money for the bridge is therefore in breach of the Housing Infrastructure Fund’s criteria and should be returned immediately so that it can be used for its intended purpose of addressing the housing crisis. Despite being told we would receive a reply within ten days, it is now over two months since we raised these concerns with Homes England. We hope they hold the Council to account and do not overlook this flagrant misuse of vital housing funds.”