News Update May 02004

As most of you will be aware from our recent newsletter, the revised “2nd Deposit Draft” of the county structure plan was issued by the County Council at the beginning of May, and again, there was a 6 week public consultation period. SPADE’s members have been busy collecting signed response forms and by end of the 6 weeks on June 10th, we had delivered a grand total of 840 forms (double our first deposit response).

This time, we widened our distribution considerably, and delivered nearly 4000 newsletters with the pre-completed response forms to Sunningwell, Bayworth, Wootton, Long Furlong, Sugworth Lane, Whitecross, North Abingdon, Radley and Kennington. Unfortunately, we didn’t have sufficient member power to be able to go back and knock on doors in Kennington, Radley and Wootton, but we were delighted with the response from all those areas by post. Along with our forms, we delivered a letter to the Council Executive, Council Officers responsible for the structure plan process, Environment Scrutiny Committee and Planning Committee outlining our considerable mandate from local people across the area, and our expectation that we will be invited to participate in the Examination in Public in October. We have not yet received a reply, but are aware that the draft list of participants is currently being drawn up.

In the expectation of an invitation to participate in the EIP, we have engaged professional planning consultants to assist us and will be working with them on our submission over the coming months.

Whilst we are all delighted that the proposal to build at Grenoble Road has been removed from the draft plan (due largely to the voicing of such strong public opinion in opposition), we have already seen that various players are lining up to lobby for it to be re-instated - you may have seen reports in the Oxford Times that Oxford City Council will be doing just that and it is difficult to believe the commercial forces behind the proposal will not be doing the same, and various NEW plans have been mooted for more development in the green belt – so it is clear that THIS BATTLE IS NOT OVER YET and we would encourage you to continue to write to lobby councillors to reject development in the Green Belt without proper review and the justification of the exceptional circumstances that are required by government planning policy guidance on the Green Belt.

The Vale local plan 2nd draft has also just been released for consultation. Unlike the County plan, there is no support in the Vale for building in the greenbelt, and whilst SPADE will be commenting to support this stance, we have not made plans to carry out a mass distribution of response forms. We would however, encourage you to write to the Vale, in support of their stance on protection of the green belt. Copies of the draft plan and response form can be ordered from the council, viewed at public libraries, and at The Abbey House, Abingdon and on the website at http://www.whitehorsedc.gov.uk/PlanningPolicy/LocalPlan/default.asp. Comments must be made by close of business on 15th July.

SPADE’s committee would like to thank everyone who completed a response form, and also SPADE members for their hard work delivering newsletters and collecting the forms. We are always looking to expand our distribution network so if you can offer us any help, please contact a member of the committee.