Oxford County looking for community feedbackfor new Official Plan through in-person, online input

Lee Griffi, Post Contributor

Oxford County is hosting four in-person workshops and launching an online survey to gather feedback to help develop its new Official Plan (OP).

“The county’s population is expected to jump to more than 200,000 over the next 20 to 30 years. The new Official Plan will help shape this future growth by guiding housing and employment planning in Oxford, supporting infrastructure and other services, protecting the environment, and overall community design,” said a county press release.

An OP is the key planning document that directs a municipality’s future growth and development. It outlines how land should be used and ensures that new development is supported by appropriate infrastructure and public services through a series of policies and planning tools.

“The current plan was originally approved in 1995, and it has been an incredibly effective tool to help us guide growth over the last number of decades. It has been reviewed and updated from time to time over that period,” said April Nix, the county’s Manager of Planning Policy.

“We’ve kept it up to date as things have changed and as we've gone through growth and development as a community. One of the things we're finding now is that we're seeing a lot more significant changes both in terms of the amount of population growth that we've been seeing over the last five to 10 years and the amount of population growth it looks like we're going to be dealing with going forward,” she added.

Nix added there are some other legislative and regulatory requirements in the province the county will have to meet with the new plan. She said now is the time for residents across the county to get involved in the process.

“The visioning we're doing right now will help us shape the goals and objectives for the plan in terms of how we're going to grow, where we're going to grow and what that looks like. Also, how we create a balance so we protect the things that are important to our communities like farmland, natural spaces and water resources.”

She said there are many questions to ask, including what change looks like and where there are opportunities to get behind some of that change.

“And to think about this at a county-wide scale, at a community-wide scale, to have some of those conversations early rather than waiting for maybe that individual development application to show up in your community or in your neighbourhood. This actually helps set the rules and requirements that influence those types of things when they happen at that local level.”

Nix said she would like to see people from all parts of the county get involved in the process to have their say, and now is the time to get involved and help Oxford set the vision for the plan in terms of how to deal with growth moving forward.

“What does growth and development look like in Thamesford, in Tavistock, in the village of Norwich, in Mount Elgin or Drumbo, which are equally fully serviced settlement areas. What does growth look like in some of our rural villages, which could be substantively different from Tillsonburg, Ingersoll or Woodstock?

What are some of the things maybe that those villages need? And I'm sure there are ideas out there about that. So, you know, that kind of thinking and that kind of feedback is really, really important right now. Like, this is the kind of feedback we're looking for through the visioning workshops and through the community survey online.

Residents can attend one of four in-person visioning workshops to have their say and are encouraged to register online in advance at www.oxfordcounty.ca/official-plan-engage. The survey closes on August 31, 2026. In-person Events are scheduled in Innerkip, Mount Elgin, Woodstock and Embro between June 16 and June 25. Nix said anyone interested in attending should RSVP, so the county has enough staff on site.

To learn more, provide feedback through the online survey, or submit comments at any time throughout the Official Plan process, visit www.oxfordcounty.ca/official-plan-engage.