Township of Blandford-Blenheim Council directed staff to initiate amendments to the Township zoning by-law to support Additional Residential Units (ARUs) in line with the Oxford County Official Plan during the regular Council meeting on Wednesday, September 3, 2025.
During the meeting, Hannelore Yager, an Oxford County Policy Planner, presented Council with the results of a preliminary review that was conducted to explore how ARUs have been implemented in the County’s rural townships.
“For some background, in early 2023 the Official Plan was amended to add policies regarding ARUs in the rural townships that conform to provincial legislative changes in 2019 and 2022. The Township of Blandford-Blenheim zoning by-law came into force and effect on July 5, 2023,” said Yager. “Township Council also passed a motion that planning staff report back once the amended by-law provisions had been in effect for at least six months, to identify any implementation issues and report on the number and nature of minor variances submitted to facilitate ARUs. Subsequently, Bill 185 was passed in 2024, which further limited municipalities’ abilities to regulate aspects of ARUs in fully serviced settlement areas.”
Yager said the goal is to continue to support the development of ARUs that are locally appropriate and are consistent with policy requirements. She said that in order to achieve that, they need to ensure that zoning provisions and decisions conform to provincial policy and the County’s Official Plan.
Additionally, the County wants to improve the clarity of the zoning by-law, so staff who use it day-to-day find the implementation more effective, and so potential applicants find it easier to understand.
Yager said that in order to complete the review, they looked at 51 planning applications from Oxford’s rural municipalities, submitted between the date the Official Plan policies came into effect and November 6, 2025, and were able to highlight some County wide trends that have implications from a policy perspective.
Yager said that the County found that most applications were occurring in the A1 and A2 zones.
“Almost all of these applications are for ARUs, located in detached accessory structures, and of those applications, about one-fifth only needed approval to permit the use,” she said. “That means applications typically require relief from additional provisions in the zoning by-law. We also wanted to understand which specific zoning by-law requirements are most likely to require a planning application. What we found is the maximum distance from the principal dwelling unit, maximum gross floor area for the ARU and maximum lot coverage for accessory structures are the most frequently requested items of relief.”
Yager explained that the results suggest that applicants want to build larger detached ARUs located further from the principal dwelling, and perhaps, even outside of the established residential area in the agricultural reserve.
She said that one purpose for the review was to understand how often planning report recommendations matched application outcomes from Council, and if they didn’t match, why that was.
“Most frequently, a planning report recommends approval, and a Council decides to approve the application. This occurs about three-quarters of the time, however, we also found that for most of the remaining cases when a planning report recommends refusal, it almost never had a matching decision,” said Yager. “So why does this occur? Well, we found that the size of a proposed ARU is the most common reason that planning report refusals aren’t reflected in a Council decision. …Overall, these findings would suggest that controlling ARU size or meeting certain safety and compatibility requirements may not be well understood, or, other planning goals may be prioritized.”
The Policy Planner said another trend that came up involved applicants converting an existing principal dwelling unit to an ARU while constructing a new main residence on the same property, something Yager called a “swap.”
“We found that almost 40 per cent of all applications involve a swap, and most of these applications are occurring outside of settlements in the agricultural reserve. The report discusses in great detail potential motivations for why this may be occurring, but the important thing to understand is whether this phenomenon has an impact, and we found it does,” said Yager. “Analysis determined that when an application is involved in a swap, they are more likely to request relief for both maximum gross floor area and distance from the principal dwelling compared to applications not involved in a swap. On average, swaps require greater amounts of relief for distance from the principal dwelling, and on average, when a swap occurs, more land is used for dwelling space overall compared to when a swap doesn’t occur.”
She said that while there’s no apparent problem with swapping dwelling types, decisions should consider whether they meet the intent of policy criteria for the agricultural area, including size and location requirements.
Yager went on to say that the review considered both local and provincial policy criteria, and that Oxford’s Official Plan policies were designed to meet local priorities, and reflect provincial policy goals.
“The new policies in the Provincial Planning Statement reinforce the importance of maintaining the intent of these local priorities, particularly the locational and size criteria for ARUs in prime agricultural areas, as it reflects this broader provincial direction,” she said. “It’s also important to understand that other accessory housing forms, like on-farm residences for farm labour, are still permitted, subject to qualifying Official Plan criteria.”
“ARUs are intended to provide an affordable housing option with added flexibility for certain policies, however, not intended to be second single-detached dwellings. Therefore, ensuring an ARU was secondary and subordinate to the principal dwelling has beneficial impacts for the agricultural reserve,” Yager Continued. “When development is compact and efficient, it ensures farmland is not removed unnecessarily, and secures it for current or future agricultural uses. As we all understand, agricultural land is a valuable resource, and it’s often under pressure for non-agricultural uses. “
She went on to say that keeping ARUs close to the principal dwelling is important as it reduces the expectation that they can be severed in the future, reduces impact on rural infrastructure and reduces the likelihood of having a new, sensitive residential-use creating conflict with surrounding farm operations.
Yager added that it’s also critical to ensure people and property remain safe and rural residential land uses are compatible with surrounding agricultural operations.
She said that while no major changes are needed to theOfficial Plan, there are some zoning by-law updates that are proposed such as:
- Using clearer terms such as “habitable floor area” rather than “gross floor area.”
- Adding definitions to make distance rules easier to understand.
- Making sure ARUs share a driveway with the primary dwelling.
- Explaining exactly where ARUs are allowed and how many are permitted.
- Fixing small issue to make the rules easier for staff and applicants, and
- Updating the rules for serviced areas (like in Plattsville in Drumbo) to match provincial law.
“Changes through Bill 185 now require that for fully serviced settlement areas, a lot containing an ARU may not be required to have a more restrictive minimum lot area for an ARU. Municipalities must permit a maximum of 45 per cent lot coverage for all buildings and structures on a lot with an ARU established,” said Yager. “Although most planning applications are happening in the agricultural reserve, we propose to amend these requirements for the R1 to R3 the CC and the V zones in service settlement areas, to ensure that the by law clearly conforms to these updated potential requirements.”
Following her presentation, Councillor Bruce Banburry asked if there were any conflicts between ARUs and agricultural operations with bunkhouses for offshore labourers and Yager said that to her understanding, there is not.
Meghan House, a senior Policy Planner with Oxford County, confirmed that the bunkhouses are considered to be part of agricultural use and the rules surrounding ARUs do not affect the creation of bunkhouses.
Mayor Mark Peterson said that most of the Township’s ARU applications are for detached standalone structures rather than in the main dwelling, and that the issue that most often occurs comes down to the distance.
He said that he hopes that by adding in some clarity to the by-law it will make it easier to make decisions in regards to approving applications.
In the end, Council received Yager’s report as information, and directed staff to initiate amendments to the Township zoning by-law to support Additional Residential Units (ARUs) in line with the Oxford County Official Plan.
Kimberly De Jong’s reporting is funded by the Canadian government through its Local Journalism Initiative.The funding allows her to report rural and agricultural stories from Blandford-Blenheim and Brant County. Reach her at kimberly.dejong@brantbeacon.ca.
