Sir – Christ Church in Oxford has put in a planning application to build 700 houses on land it owns in Brize Norton parish, next to the RAF base (Gazette, January 29).
The site is unsuitable for sustainable housing for many reasons.
There is no prospect of significant, new local employment and the poor road infrastructure deters businesses from locating here.
The estate will become another dormitory, with no positive effect on Carterton.
People will be forced to drive to work on the already-congested A40 and A420, and traffic will increase through local villages.
If planning permission is granted, a very dangerous precedent will be set.
It would open the flood gates to even larger scale developments around Carterton because the same arguments apply to these sites, and planners would find it difficult to reject such development in the future.
The developer is trying to justify the plans by claiming that the new houses would bring employment.
Not true. How many jobs have the 1,500 houses in Shilton Park created? The answer is very few. The nearby retail park has units that have been empty for over a decade and sit by barren, empty land.
Homes need to be where the jobs are. In this case, Oxford.
The Government’s new National Planning Policy Framework says “the purpose of planning is to help achieve sustainable development.
“Sustainable means ensuring that better lives for ourselves don’t mean worse lives for future generations”.
Let us think of future generations and encourage our planners and councillors to do likewise.
M French, Station Road, Brize Norton
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