Support the ROAR Rally, Saturday 30 April, 11.00, Woodstock
Rural Oxfordshire Action Rally (ROAR), a founding member of the Need not Greed Oxon coalition, is organising a Rally on Saturday 30 April, at 11.00am, outside Woodstock Town Hall.
The theme of the Rally is ‘You are not alone’. Local communities from all over Oxfordshire and beyond are facing the same threats – inappropriate development on greenfields on the edge of villages and towns, the Oxford Green Belt and Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty, because of the forced economic growth strategy for the county. The purpose of this Rally is to demonstrate the scale and the ubiquity of the problem.
Please come along and show your support!
Only half of County’s proposed housing to meet ‘local needs’ – Call for open debate on growth targets
A new study commissioned by Need not Greed Oxon finds that fewer than half of the homes proposed for Oxfordshire over the next 15 years are needed to meet local demand.
Local councils have committed Oxfordshire to providing 100,000 new houses by 2031, the equivalent of two new Oxfords, however a report by Alan Wenban-Smith, a leading planning consultant, suggests that, even allowing for a normal pattern of jobs growth, just 45,000 houses would be required over that time to meet ‘local needs‘.
In a letter to the press NGGO coalition members say OxLEP workshops were not a ‘meaningful consultation’
In a letter to the press Need not Greed Oxon coalition members, Peter Jay of ROAR and Alan Lodwick of Kidlington Development Watch said the OxLEP SEP ‘Refresh’ Workshops did not constitute a ‘meaningful consultation’ and were part of a ‘crude PR exercise’.
Peter Jay and Alan Lodwick said: “these events were not a meaningful consultation, least of all about the big issues of the democratic illegitimacy of the LEP or the arbitrary and subjective numbers generated by the SEP. They were part of a crude PR exercise in generating an illusion of consent to a deeply damaging and dishonest promotion of vested business and property interests.”
OxLEP – the Oxfordshire Local Enterprise Parternship, tasked with driving forward forced economic growth in the county, held a series of workshops over the past fortnight with the purpose of engaging the public in the SEP ‘Refresh’. But as Peter Jay and Alan Lodwick quite rightly point out in their letter to the press, “The plan is clear: to impose this economic plan on Oxfordshire come hell or high water; and no burbling about democracy, localism or the public interest is going to be allowed to get in the way.”
Read the letter in full below.
Read more …
Gladman submits planning application for 60 homes in the village of Harwell
Gladman have now submitted a formal planning application for 60 homes on greenfield land to north of Didcot Road, in the village of Harwell.
Keep Harwell Rural strongly object to this proposed development since it would erode the last green barrier between Harwell and Didcot.