Town council backs ‘west’ (From Witney Gazette)

Town council backs ‘west’

8:50am Wednesday 2nd February 2011 in News By Tom Jennings

CARTERTON Town Council has backed controversial plans to build 1,000 homes to the west of the town.

But Alvescot Parish Council, to the south-west of Carterton, described the decision as “premature” and “inappropriate”.

Carterton has been earmarked for major development by West Oxfordshire District Council in its Core Strategy final draft, which sets out where housing developments will go until 2026.

But district councillors are undecided whether to develop west of the Shill Brook Valley or east towards Brize Norton. A development to the north of Carterton has been ruled out.

Richard Anstis, planning advisor to Alvescot Parish Council, said: “The decision by Carterton Town Council to make public their choice between the preferred options put forward by the district council is both premature and inappropriate.

“The district council does not even have sufficient evidence to support a need for Carterton to expand at all.

“The district council document, that is currently published for consultation, certainly does not seek to choose a potential site, nor has Carterton Town Council been asked to do so.

“For its members, at this early stage, to put a finger in the air and randomly decide to back one of the sites under discussion, without giving the various options proper consideration and without even having seen the results of this consultation, makes the members look prejudiced and irresponsible.

“As a result, they will now find it very hard publicly to change their minds when they have seen all the evidence, at which point they will realise that even if there does need to be expansion, the open floodplain and meadows to the west of Carterton are not the place to have it.”

But Carterton deputy mayor, Adrian Coomber, said: “At the moment, based on the information that we have been provided by the developers, we think that the west option seems to have the most things in its favour, partly because it impinges less on the villages.

“The east option would close the gap between Carterton and Brize Norton village, which we thought was a bad thing — and there was a lot of opposition from Brize Norton village.”

He said the west option was also preferred because it would make the Shill Brook Valley more accessible to the public.

He added: “The west option also has more flexibility, in that it is a larger area.

“Hopefully the development would be less dense, and there could be flexibility for further development in the future. We are looking longer-term than 2026.”

Mr Coomber said he hoped that West Oxfordshire District Council, which has the final say in the decision, would take on board the “local knowledge” of the town council. Brize Norton resident Shane Rae, who has spearheaded the campaign against the development to the east, said: “It is still a thousand houses in one place, but it is in a better place for sure, which we would obviously be very happy about.

“But what we were trying to do was to stop this thinking that they have to build 1,000 houses in one place.

“The infrastructure of the community can’t sustain the number of people that are here now.

“There’s no jobs for the people that are here now.

“The infrastructure and jobs should come now, before the housing.”

Alvescot residents protested the Core Strategy at a West Oxfordshire District Council cabinet meeting on January 12.

The district council is going through a period of public consultation on the strategy, which will end on March 17.