In 1980 ownership of South Oxhey passed from London's government to the local district council.23,146 Many tenants bought their homes, the 1950s shopping centre wore out, and from 2016 the council rebuilt the heart of the estate with a developer and a housing association.25,229
The road that was never built
The LCC had told the 1944 inquiry that it expected a trunk road through the site, and for years afterwards a road really was expected.99 An open strip between Muirfield Road and Ashridge Drive, already clear on early aerial photographs of the estate, was kept for an orbital route that Our Oxhey identifies as Ringway 3.429 Neil Hamilton says it would have crossed Prestwick Road near the Dick Whittington on a flyover and cut straight through the estate.429 While the land was reserved, Ashridge Drive was joined to the rest of the estate only by a footpath, which residents remember as the cinder track with a single lamp on it.429 The reservation outlived the plan. A buyer in Sidmouth Close in the 1970s still found the route on the local search, long after the scheme had been dropped.429
From London to Three Rivers
On 1 April 1965 the Greater London Council replaced the London County Council, and South Oxhey became a GLC estate.146,163 In April 1980 the GLC handed the estate and its homes to Three Rivers District Council.23,146
A government order made in March 1980 transferred GLC housing listed in its schedules to London borough and district councils, normally from 1 April.175 The Three Rivers Museum Trust says much of the housing was by then defective and in need of repair.23 The playing fields took a separate route, and John Swain dates their transfer to Three Rivers to 1989 (see The playing fields).12
The concrete houses rebuilt
Some of the estate's houses had to be built twice. A resident who moved into Prestwick Road in about 1954 says that around fifteen years later the houses there were found to be pre-cast concrete, and that the outer walls were taken down and rebuilt in brick.453 Some people moved out while the walls were rebuilt, but her family stayed. Temporary windows went in, props held up the ceilings, and the work and the dust lasted two or three months in each house.453 Tenants who had already bought their house had to pay towards it.453 The same resident says they got a porch out of it, and a warmer house.453
New building went on around the older houses as well. Warden-controlled flats were put up on a large green in Trevose Way, on a site now known as the Harrogate Club.477
Right to buy, and harder times
The Housing Act 1980 gave council tenants the right to buy their homes, and many in South Oxhey did.25,682 Some of the prefabricated houses had construction defects, and with ownership now mixed, repairs were done at different times and to different specifications.25 Municipal Dreams, citing a council page, says about 70 per cent of the estate's council houses had been sold by 2007.25,146 The Geograph caption to a 2009 photograph of Offerton House, reposted on Our Oxhey in 2010, traced the same line of management, from the LCC to the GLC in 1965 and on to Three Rivers in 1980, and gave an estimate that at least 70 per cent of the property was by then privately owned.683
Transport links were cut back too. Bakerloo line trains stopped serving Carpenders Park after 24 September 1982.74
The St Andrew's precinct once had Sainsbury's, Woolworths, Boots and a Co-op, but some national chains pulled out as out-of-town shopping grew.25,211 In 2013 the council said its research showed that just 16 per cent of South Oxhey shoppers' money was spent in the local economy, and the council leader said it was "a tough time for town centres across Britain".346
Community life
Since 1996 ASCEND, based at All Saints Church, has helped local people into work and training, and the community choir that Gareth Malone formed here in 2008 for BBC Two's The Choir: Unsung Town, shown in September 2009, still rehearses every week in term time.189,190,203,668 Volunteers put the Our Oxhey history website online in 2010 and held its public launch at Oxhey Library on 18 March 2011.176,206 Clubs, sport and events follows the community association, the teams, the carnivals and the choir, and Shops and pubs follows the shops, the pubs, the library and the doctors.
New landlords
In a 2007 ballot, council tenants across Three Rivers voted 80.6 per cent in favour of moving their homes to Thrive Homes, a new housing association, on a 62.5 per cent turnout.200 The transfer took place in 2008, the year given by the council's accounts and by a 2017 planning inspector.201,202 Municipal Dreams gives 2018, probably in error.25 On 1 June 2026 Thrive merged into Watford Community Housing, and the combined landlord is now called Chime Housing.262,263
Rebuilding the centre
By 2011 the 1950s precinct was worn out, and on 30 January 2012 councillors of all parties voted to redevelop it.213,343 In 2015 the council chose Countryside Properties and Home Group as partners, and between 2016 and 2024 they rebuilt the centre in three phases, with 659 new homes, 182 of them affordable.32,34,222
The new centre has Station Square, new shops, a market square on Prestwick Road and a Lidl, which opened on 3 November 2022, while the library kept its place beside the new blocks.25,248,377 The full story, phase by phase, is in Rebuilding the centre.
Measuring deprivation
The government's Indices of Deprivation rank small neighbourhoods across England, and South Oxhey ward holds four of them.684,685 In 2015 the one that runs west from Carpenders Park station and takes in the town centre, known as Three Rivers 012D, was among England's most deprived 10 per cent.685,686,687 In 2019 it was in the most deprived 20 per cent, the only part of Three Rivers that was.688
In 2025 it ranked 7,085th of 33,755, just outside the most deprived 20 per cent overall.684 On the separate measures it was in the most deprived 20 per cent for income, employment and health, and in the most deprived 10 per cent for crime.684 The ward's other three neighbourhoods sat in the middle bands.684,685 The government warns that the editions use different data and should not be read as a time series.689
South Oxhey today
Figures for the estate as a whole are hard to pin down. A Watford Observer piece of 1993 described South Oxhey as a housing estate of about 25,000 people, well above the 17,000 usually given for the 1950s, and no source we found explains how it was worked out.187 The area of today's South Oxhey ward had 7,306 people in 2011, and at the 2021 census the ward had 7,878 residents in 3,223 households. The ward does not cover the whole of the original estate, so these figures cannot be compared with the 17,000 of the 1950s.247,690 Of those households, 47.4 per cent owned their home, 39.0 per cent rented from a social landlord and 11.8 per cent rented privately, compared with 42.3 per cent social renting in 2011.690,691 The estate also reaches into Oxhey Hall and Hayling ward, which takes in Hayling Road, and Carpenders Park ward, which takes in streets such as Woodhall Lane, so no single figure covers it all.247,692,693
In March 2025 county councillors discussed plans for a day centre on the old Sir James Altham school site, with about 76 extra care homes proposed beside it.392 At Foxgrove Path, 53 homes were under construction on 1 April 2025, according to a council report published in April 2026, and energy certificates suggest they were finished in November 2025.255,694 The council's new Local Plan, which the government directed in March 2026 to include seven sites the council had ruled out, went out for a final round of comment from 31 July to 25 September 2026, with an examination expected in 2027.260,695 In June 2026 councillors agreed that Watford Rural Parish Council, which covers South Oxhey and Carpenders Park, can write its own neighbourhood plan.156,264
On 16 July 2026 the government decided, subject to Parliament, that Three Rivers should join a new South West Hertfordshire council in April 2028.265 In September 2026 the government announced a review and pause of the process.266