The Planning Inspector has started his Stage 2 hearings regarding the – Vale of White Horse District Council – Local Plan to 2031. The hearings started today (Tuesday 2) and carry on till Friday 19 February.
Sessions most likely of interest are:
Wednesday 3: Green Belt
Thursday 4: Strategy for Abingdon-on-Thames and Oxford Fringe Sub Area
Tuesday 16: Five-Year supply of housing land
Thursday 18: Supporting infrastructure and services
The hearings are at the Beacon in Wantage, starting at 10.00 each day. Anyone can go and observe, but only those pre-registered can speak. There are a lot of written submissions already.
For example Carter Jonas for Commercial Estates Group want to develop the area north of Abingdon with 800 houses and a primary school. They have a long documents why this development is ‘soundly based and deliverable‘.
The North Abingdon Local Plan Group are against this development for reasons of traffic congestion and air pollution.
More information at http://www.whitehorsedc.gov.uk/services-and-advice/planning-and-building/planning-policy/new-local-plan-2031/vale-white-horse-local
Thanks to Hester for letting us know.
Really don’t like the way Abingdon is viewed/termed as an Oxford sub area, I suppose it makes sense to try and contain the inevitable sprawl within the bounds of the A34? and unlike Moreland Green the developer has included a school in their plan? I would oppose a park & ride to Oxford located at Peachcroft, this could wreck business in Abingdon, Perish the thought of our beautiful Abingdon on Thames morphing into another Didcot Keynes !
…but we need all the houses for the farmers and agricultural workers.
stick a full diamond interchange at Lodge Hill and you wont have the traffic problems… sorted.
Full diamond before the houses please !
Developers will get their way in the end. Does anyone know what the land the Abingdon side of Drayton is being cleared for? Is it housing? I notice that development is also going ahead by the Bakery in Steventon. Abingdon will be joined to Drayton in the end and Drayton joined to Steventon. I expect the traffic coming down the Drayton Road will increase even more.
Indeed Janet and despite numerous references to the Drayton and Stevenson developments and the impact they too will have on ock bridge/ Marcham rd, they were still given the green light ! Neighbourhood Plan? No point at all !
Until the diamond junction at Lodge hill is completed there is no way the local infrastructure around north Abingdon can handle that amount of extra traffic.
What is with these town planners, do you have your brains removed when you get into office???? Please advise
It’s called spoofing Colin, a pre requisit to Abits was a second river crossing, that’s what sold the idea, it never happened! Nor did the Marcham rd “jet lane” that supposedly had money ring fenced for it, that was removed from the spec of Abits mid way through the project, one only has to look at the old gaol fiasco to realise we’re all being taken for fools !
With the expansion required for Oxford and Abingdon to allow for our growing population, the northern development makes a lot of sense. Especially with a new park & ride and better A34 interchange. Abingdon is very much a dormitory town for Oxford and now London too. The peripheral road will be reduced to 30mph and with a few toucan crossings access will be easy and “as safe as anywhere else”. Prior efforts show that we cannot halt the march of progress, but perhaps our “pressure groups” and TC can do more to shape these developments. Does this re-open the neighbourhood plan argument?
Would it be erudite to temper any hopes we might have with the knowledge that we WILL get all these houses. We will get all these houses based on the projected housing need for the area. The projected housing need can not and will not be argued with. The projected housing need will be established by ‘consultants’. Who has paid for the Consultants. We must adhere to what the Consultants advise. The Consultants could never be wrong. The consultancy figures may be wrong. What if their figures are flawed.
We will get the development. Developers will make lots of money. Consultants will make lots of money. All based on some figures for housing need which only might be accurate, but arguably won’t be.
And so turn the wheels of progress.
Daniel
The local and national press make depressing reading these days: there are places in Oxford with higher deprivation rates than some parts of London usually recognised as bywords for poverty; there are high deprivation rates in several areas of Abingdon; schools and hospitals in Oxford can’t recruit teachers and nurses because rents in this area are so high, so the schools are going in to special measures and the kids are getting worse and worse life chances and the waiting lists for the hospitals are growing ever longer. And that is before we even start to think of the problems facing the homeles and the elderly.
Yes, you are right to be suspicious of “consultants” but those of us who care need to try to DO something – it is hard to know how we can make a difference but one thing we CAN do is try to make sure that whatever housing is built helps to address some of these needs rather than just ticking boxes or lining developers pockets. There are examples around the country – some quite close at hand – where by getting in before the land is sold – and before planning applications are submitted, proper conditions have been laid down and the resultant developments ha’ve been decent, low-cost and with good infrastrucure. Isnt it better to strive for that sort of result rather than give in to cyncicism or despair?
…I’m not sure. I’m still on my way down, before I can start coming up.
One such ‘report’ that informed the need for housing highlighted the “increase in agricultural employment” as one if many drivers for the housing we are to get. The report, about that report, referenced another report that countered in every way the growth in the agricultural sector and…vis-a-vis the need, or no need, to provide homes for that totally non-existant demand.
When you and I are governed by favts and stats, proofs and evidence…it is a hard dlog when you are up against whims, hetesay, inaccuracy, and profit motivated reports.
But yes, agreed…far better to have the houses built…and the “jam tomorrow” infrastructure promised…and us having fought, or feel we fought, than it happen and we do nothing. “At least we tried”…a fitting epitaph for Abingdon, perhaps.
Do we know how many of the 800 homes will be £350k starter homes? Do we know where the ” out of the way” social housing won’t get planning permission yet?
I can’t help be cynical.
I would be half as cynical if the plans put before us detailed the timescale for Lodge Hill. The rjuvination and investment in our schools, healthcare facilities, and town centre, bricks laid for social housing….and then….then and only then….we start having consultations on 800 houses…
Hester, cynicism is usually a result of continued dissapointment, bordering on despair, the reason schools can’t recruite good teachers is because government won’t pay for them, but the public schools will, faced with the choice of teaching in a local seco or primary school where the going is certainly to be tough, with little perental input and poor and inadequate facilities on a mediocre wage or teach in a well funded private school with excellent pay and all the parental help you could wish for, what would be your choice ? It’s nothing to do with housing costs, I don’t know if you listened to radio Oxford today? They featured the plight of Anne, a middle aged care worker who works as a a care worker, she had to leave her last rented flat because the landlord sold it so for the last 8 months she’s been living in her car ! As you probably know I have a few properties I rent? Last year I had to evict two Africans from a flat because they were sub letting it to 6 other people, the tenants were also on false passports, where are they now? They were given a brand new 3 bedroom house courtesy of sovereign housing, how many times have we seen parents complained about school placed? Jimmy is in one school and younger sister ends up three miles away because of a shortage of places? Last year I rented a flat to a Bulgarian, he asked if his wife and child could stay there because he wanted them to come and live here, they arrived and his six year old son was given a choice of Abingdon schools, a month later he asked if the tenancy agreement could be put into his wife’s name which would prove she was paying the rent from which she would be given an nhs number and have the rent paid for by the state ! I’ve just evicted them so now they’ve moved onto another private dwelling, but the vale has paid the deposit! At the bottom of Preston Road is an ex council house that has had the shed extended to cover
Most of the garden, the postman estimated there are over 20 people living there! The reason our infrastructure doesn’t work is because we’ve allowed to many people in !
I agree with what the captain said above…for years we were told that if you spoke out against immigration you were a racist thug! And that the amount of immigrants being allowed in was such a tiny drop in the ocean that it would have no impact on society…and now, all of a sudden we have found that there is a massive shortage of housing, shcools, hospital, Dr’s and dentist places iand our nfrastructure cannot cope….well “No s**t Sherlock, a child could have predicted this coming…but children aren’t in charge of making decisions…consultants, politicians, and advisors are..all lining their already fat pockets at our expense! It won’t matter a jot to them that there is no affordable housing…their million pound homes aren’t affected? Poor schools won’t matter to them..little Lord Fauntleroy has got his education mapped out before birth…and it doesn’t include any schools in deprived areas that are in special measures!
I have said before….IF we need this housing, and I’m not convinced we do…(I believe this was a fudge to re kickstart the building trade and so the economy…and predict in 10 years time we will have masses of empty houses!), then we should be insisting that NEW towns/cities are built..with NEW infrastructure…not bolted on to already groaning towns which are already at breaking point! But they won’t do that..although there are vast swathes of land they could do it on…even locally, because then the developers would need to actually provide infrastructure…and not a vague “promise” to maybe do it if enough houses are allowed, and they would not make such huge profits! If 1st time housing was such an issue then the new houses would ALL be FORCED to be 250k starter homes or social housing….
But oh well…all of the whinging on here won’t make a bit of difference..these plans WILL go ahead..with or without a NP..because someone on high has decreed it will…and they will not make money of it doesn’t….
Apologies..rant over.
Do you remember that thong that was in the news all the time a year or do ago? About, what was it…Cl-mate change(?), or Glow-ball warmerring; or some such thing…? Is that still going on?
Anyway, on the assumption it is; at least the 800 homes will all have solar panels so effectively be “off grid” will have grey water harvesting systems so not add to our problems with flushing toilets with drinking water and of course some of the houses will make use of the vast ground source heat pumps employed, so have no heating costs. Of course, the constructions will all be carbon neutral.
And, to square that circle…each dwelling will have to comply with the “1 parking space per bedroom” policy, or whatever it is that the rest of us have to?
That’s..if there are any planning adhereances at all.
But, on the bright side…there’ll be a nice new school for the kids in South Abingdon to go to!
In the VOWH LOCAL PLAN PART 1 EXAMINATION (STAGE 2) hearing statement. Matter 8: Strategy for Abingdon on Thames and Oxford Fringe sub-area (CP8-CP11 and CP 14 on behalf of Redrow Homes
the people who wrote the report state that the nearest secondary school to south Kennington is Radley College. Lucky children who are going to live there. Just shows how much reliance is placed on Mr Google!!
Is that incorrect Helene?
I didn’t mean to suggest that the children would be going there, more that report writers rely too much on Google and that they don’t know the locality they are writing about. I’ve copied the relevant piece from the report.
Primary School
St Swithun’s CofE Primary School
Grundy Crescent, Oxford, OX1 5PS
0.7 miles, within walking distance of the site.
15 minute walk 6 minute cycle


Secondary School
Radley College
Radley,
Abingdon, OX14 2HR
0.9 miles, within walking distance of the site.
18 minute walk 4 minute cycle