More than 40 homes have been approved for social rent.
Councillor Linda Smith, city council cabinet member for housing and communities, confirmed the approval of another 43 of the new homes at Barton Park for social rent to local households on the housing register.
She called it a “great way to start the day”.
More than half of the 885 new properties at Barton Park will be affordable homes, including 354 homes for social rent.
Oxford City Council’s cabinet previously made the decision to acquire 354 homes at Barton Park in October 2024.
Linda Smith (Image: Contributed)
This means more houses will become available for people on waiting lists.
The outline plans for the 865-home development were originally approved in 2013.
More than 200 households are already living on site, with a sports pavilion, sports pitch ad park already open
A primary school opened in 2020, serving families in Barton Park and neighbouring Barton.
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Barton Park Primary School (Image: River Learning Trust)
Concerns were raised in 2020 that the ‘car-centric’ estate went against years of work in reducing car numbers in East Oxford.
Former councillor Jemima Hunt said at the time: “Having just spent the past three years reducing car numbers in East Oxford, this is a completely counterintuitive development.
“We are reducing and taking away 500 parking spaces about a mile down the road from this development.”
Mark Pett, from Headington Heritage, highlighted that the people in need of the affordable homes will not necessarily be able to afford a car and will be cycling to work in Oxford.
The plans for 865 homes at Barton Park were approved with a condition to minimise any extra possibilities of parking.
The council already manages the day-to-day running of OX Place tenancies.
Tenants are unlikely to notice any changes in the management of their tenancies, the council said.
The Barton Park development
The OX Place homes were already let at social rent, and this will remain unchanged.
Upon becoming council tenants, the existing residents will gain new rights to arrange a mutual exchange of their home or exercise the right to buy.
Spouses, partners, or close family members living with a tenant at the time of their death will also gain the right to inherit their tenancy.
OX Place will gift any furniture or appliances rented through the furnished tenancy scheme, so tenants own them outright.
When work to build the first homes at Barton Park started in 2015, Government finance restrictions meant councils could not use the Housing Revenue Account (HRA) to fund the building of affordable council homes.
Instead, the council used low-cost borrowing to finance Barton Park’s affordable homes from its general fund. This meant they could not be council housing.
However, the lifting of borrowing restrictions in 2018 removed this need.