Housing Development Developments

I went down to Dunmore Road to check out on the progress of the housing developments: Abbey Fields and Kings Gate.

There will be no more wheat harvests in Abbey Fields. Instead there are likely to be grass lawns, a variety of flowers, bushes and trees between houses. There could even be a few small ponds.

At Kings Gatey I was interested to see how builders make bow windows using breeze blocks. It is rough inside and a smooth outside.

A lot of the chestnut trees were cut down in front of Kings Gate. The ones that remain have made a lot of conkers.

13 thoughts on “Housing Development Developments

    1. Hester

      According to a County Council report made to the Town Council a couple of weeks ago “There was a much higher response to the consultation on the designs for the Lodge Hill slip roads than anticipated. The team have been working through the responses which had a strong focus on the need for the designs to be better for pedestrians and cyclists.”

      So, it seems to have literally gone back to the drawing board. It looks as if no-one had told the road design teams that the Council’s priority was to “encourage active travel”!

      Reply
      1. Ste

        Do we know if the construction will start in Spring 2022 as previously stated?

        The lack of communication on this is awful…

        Reply
    1. Hester

      Well, maybe you know more than I do about the ages of people commenting, but most of the retired people I know are not opposed to these developments but are pressing for them to be made decent quality and with decent facilities. Expensive shoddy houses, close up against highly-polluting roads and making the occupants dependent on cars to get anywhere are not going to do anyone any favours in the long term. (I would hazard a guess that the people who are objecting to them on the grounds of traffic are more likely to be still working than retired!)

      Reply
  1. Kenny’s hat

    Wasn’t there a stipulation somewhere on how many houses could be built / occupied before the diamond was sorted?

    Reply
    1. Hester

      The 2017 planning permission for the “Abbeyfields” development said “ No more than 400 dwellings shall be occupied until a contract for the construction works to provide the south facing A34 Lodge Hill slip roads has been awarded by the County Council.”
      This doesn’t include the “Kingsgate” development.

      Reply
  2. Colin

    People need to live somewhere. Seems like the Abingdon retiree brigade like to complain that A) there is not enough houses available for the youth but B) they should not be built in Abingdon #resistchange

    Reply
    1. Tricia

      Don’t make sweeping assumptions, Colin. I’m one of that ‘retiree brigade’ and moved here when the population of Abingdon was 19,000. As long as development is good quality, then I welcome it. Abingdon is all the richer for the talents and skills of people moving into the area. We’re lucky enough to be in an area of expanding employment so new development is needed.

      Reply
  3. Daniel

    I think people will complain for a plethora of different reasons. The people who queue daily leaving town to Culham will probably wonder why ‘development’ is happening on fields when they are stuck stationary looking at a dilapidated acres of brown field site at The Upper Reaches. People queuing the other way will likely be ‘complaining’ because of the extra traffic poor ‘development’ will bring.

    People living in plasterboard boxes with unresolved “snagging lists” will probably have other concerns at yet more “development”.

    People who have heard promises and promises of ‘infrastructure before development’ this time, last time, the time before and the time before that…likely have a resigned shrug at the situation repeating itself year on year, ‘development’ after ‘development’ and frankly can’t be bothered to cause a stir. Why would they.

    Personally I object on various counts, but not least the virtue signalling over ‘climate change’ on one hand and the total disregard for ‘climate change’ when a profit is at stake, on the other…yet I am made to feel bad over the tiny amount I could do, when those in a position to make actual, real, positive, concerted change (albeit only towards a tiny fraction of the 1% of the problem we are responsible for) continually get away with barely making any effort whatsoever – beyond paying lip service to a mere wiff of some paragraph about planting a wild flower bed at some point, somewhere, if funds allow….having cut down umpteen trees in the first place (that each supported a thousand different species originally).

    Just to reiterate, of all the ‘development’ that’s gone on recently in Abingdon…and all that is yet to come…there’s not a solar panel or grey water collection system between all of them.

    Reply

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