District Council By-Election - Kirtlington Ward

Only one nomination was received for this vacancy, left vacant when Neil Godwin resigned, Simon Paul Thomas Mackenzie Holland of East Wing, Kirtlington Park, Kirtlington, has been deemed elected unopposed and is now our District Council representative. The Weston-Front Committee met him last Tuesday and he is very supportive of our campaign.

Parliamentary Lobby - 30th June

A great experience and good to meet up with some of the other protest groups. The lobby received much media attention and we featured on the evening national and local TV and radio stations. Read report of additional meetings with ministers that followed.

Whitehall eco-town protest (BBC iPlayer, 30th June)
What's Eco about Eco-towns? Grant Shapps, MP, Shadow Housing Minister talks to the Daily Politics on BBC2 (June, 30th 2008)

Here's Oxfordshire County Council's work for the recently closed consultation on eco-town locations

Report by Head of Sustainable Development

Joint Report by Cherwell DIstrict Council and Oxfordshire County Council
Joint Technical Note
Transport Assessment Work
Initial Analysis of Railway Proposals
SEEDA Scoping report for Study on economic and social impacts on Bicester and other nearby settlements by proposal for Eco Town at Weston Otmoor
Assessment of Weston Otmoor against Eco-Town Criteria

End of Public Consultation:

Weston Front submitted their response to the proposals last week - we thank all those of you who sent us comments or offered advice or help. Read what we said - Weston Front Response document.

Similarly BBOWT (Bucks, Berks & Oxfordshire Wildlife Trust) also submitted their response document - BBOWT Response document

And the RSPB couldn't find anything positive to say about the proposal - RSPB response

WESTON OTMOOR ECO CAR PARK
Trapped! Only when a passing car comes in will a resident be allowed out.

Yes, Junction 9 is at capacity so for a car to leave the eco-town at peak times, cameras wait for a passing commuter to turn off into the gigantic new Park & Ride car park. Traffic leaving is controlled by punitive variable pricing. So if people just drive past the eco-town without stopping the price rises to £200 [ref Transport Assessment Work] to stop residents being able to leave and cause a jam. Nice!

There will be a telescreen in every house with a continuous display of the cost to drive out. At 7.30am over your coffee you'll see it's only £25; with your cornflakes at 7.50am, it'll have risen to £60; by the time you've finished your bacon & eggs at 8.15am the jackpot has been hit again, yes it's over £200. Suddenly another day off looks like a better, and much cheaper, idea than that sales meeting in Abingdon you were hoping to drive to.

Barking Mad? Yes, you've got it in one!

Oxfordshire County Council's extensive submission to the now closed consultation on eco-town locations concluded that

see also Report questions eco-town railway (BBC 3rd July 2008)

Transport & other design work is being done by consultants for Parkridge
The RIBA Practice Bulletin – No. 442 of 17th April, 2008 says that "The stakes are high with reports of enormous no-win, no-fee deals already on offer to consultants"

No more cars required!

07:52 July 1st, 2008. Looking north at the M40 from J9. No incidents reported.

Southbound M40 traffic is snarled trying to exit and join the A34 southbound. The junction is operating at capacity. Only a few more vehicles would bring the M40 southbound to a halt with tailbacks north to Junction 10, itself another bottleneck.

Heavy traffic joining northbound from A34.
Image Crown Copyright ©

The open country in the picture will be built on to just below the horizon. The M40 is the eastern boundary of the eco-town. Weston on the Green is a mile to the west (left) on the far boundary of the gigantic site. The town will extend a mile north and over a mile south from here and be larger than Bicester. A quarter of the site is Oxford green belt.

Even a jamcam picture of a motorway manages to convey the full glory of Midsummer England. Why destroy it forever?

PARKRIDGE CONSULTATION is under way. Maybe it's a golf course?

here's the complete list of venues and dates as their roadshow tours the county, selling.................... well, what do you think it is? (detailed plans ready end 2009)

CONSULTATION A SHAM

• no details on the green brown splodge of a town map
• no details on the eco-town exemplar criteria met
• no details on energy conservation features such as district heating, solar and wind energy, passive features
• no details on extra pollution from the power station
• no details on particulate fallout over Bicester
• no details on the number of trucks per day of fuel for the power station
• no details on power station fuel type: gas, coal, oil, rubbish or woodchips
• no details on new electricity pylons
• no details on waste management and recycling
• no details on water conservation and management
• no details on water supply in area of "high stress"
• no details on destruction of nature reserve
• no details on effect on Otmoor
• no details on flooding of Rivers Ray and Cherwell
• no details on conservation of wildlife
• no details on traffic estimates
• no details about railway development funding
• no details about schools
• no details about leisure facilities
• no details about town governance
• no details on the powers or constitution of the Weston Otmoor Management Company
• no details about charges for living in the private town
• no details about parking
• no details about sports grounds
• no details about cinemas
• no details about shops
• no details about libraries
• no details about fibre optic cabling, internet, cable TV
• no details about gas supplies
• no details about housing types
• no details about size of gardens
• no details about medical services
• no details about care for old people
• no details about care for young people
• no details about care for children
• no details about care for mothers
• no details about social services
• no details about hotels
• no details about factories
• no details about offices
• no details on cost
• no details about deliverability
• no details about effect of credit crunch
• no details about rising mortgage rates
• no details about stalling housing starts
• no details about light pollution
• no details about air pollution
• no details about noise pollution
• no details about global warming
• no details about Conservative Party opposition
• no details about District Council opposition
• no details about County Council opposition
• no details about opposition of parish councils
• no details about answering questions
• no details

• plain wrong about the green belt used. It's 25% not 6%.

This could be a golf course and no-one would know for sure until it's been built.

Now you see it, now you don't

An eco-town needs a power station to provide electricity and steam for central heating at the same time. It halves the greenhouse gases produced for the same amount of energy consumed in the home. It is called Combined Heat and Power or CHP. A town this big needs a big power station. A really BIG power station. It will produce (and of course save) thousands of tonnes of greenhouse gas every day and if sited in the NW corner of the site, prevailing SW winds will take pollution and particulate fallout over Bicester.

The initial proposal to the government had one, labelled unambiguously

from the legend

but the on the plan for the current consultation it's disappeared completely

A member of the Parkridge technical staff was asked about this at the roadshow and his explanation was that the site labelled CHP on the initial proposal was a greenhouse for growing fuel. A fuel as yet unknown to rational science, we can only assume.

If the proposed town does not have CHP, no number of solar panels or rooftop windmills will make it an eco-town.

STATISTICS - How the Government create theirs!

Housing minister Caroline Flint has claimed there is clear support for eco-towns, despite the large demonstration in Westminster on Monday by people who are against the proposals. Her comments are certainly contrary to the views held by the majority of people in weston on the Green so one wonders where she obtains her information from.

Whilst we were campaigning in Westminster on Monday, a market research company (Cragg Ross Dawson) was going down Church Close and enticing people to take part in a survey about Weston-Otmoor. I don't know if they approached any other part of the village. Individuals were being offered £35 to attend a meeting in Chesterton this Thursday (3/7/08).

I've since learnt that other towns and villages affected by similar eco-town schemes have been approached in this manner. It seems as though the Government have arranged for a research company to pay £35 to eight members of the public from each town or village affected by the scheme. They selected people who were both for and against the plan.

A spokesman for the Department of Communities and Local Government, has said: "Focus group research is a valuable way of understanding the views and motivations of local residents, both for and against proposed eco-towns, and identifying ways to address their concerns. This work will extend our ability to ensure all voices are heard."

Now any good statistician will tell you that taking a sample of eight people from a population of around 450 (for Weston) is not going to give you statistically reliable results and this would explain the Housing ministers erroneous claims!

If you've been offered £35 by these door-to-door salesmen then please let us know! And to finish on a rather amusing note - the person i spoke to declined the offer - he thought they were trying to sell him time-share houses!!!

CPRE SLAMS ECO-TOWNS, FLINT:
"we now believe we have been led astray"
"promises that eco-towns will address the lack of affordable rural housing are flawed:"[1]

• car dependent housing estates
• sites are predominantly greenfield
• against local plans and therefore have no local democratic mandate
• site-selection is developer-led
• consultation with little firm information
• insistence that eco-towns should be freestanding makes no sense

Marina Pacheco, Head of Planning, CPRE said:
‘We strongly support affordable housing in the countryside and have done considerable research on the topic. We support the Rural Affordable Housing Commission’s call for 7,700 affordable social rented homes to be provided in rural areas [3]. Far from perpetuating myths, we are seriously engaging with the debate over new housing. We would love to speak to Caroline Flint in person about our concerns. Unfortunately, we’ve written to her requesting a meeting on more than one occasion over the past six months, but have yet to receive a response.’

Eco-Towns: Government should go back to the drawing board (Campaign to Protect Rural England, 30th June, 2008)
We are ready to talk Minister, are you? (Campaign to Protect Rural England, 30th June, 2008)

[1] recent evidence from Warwickshire County Council show that the average house price in the proposed Middle Quinton eco-town would be an unaffordable £300,000.

"SOVIET STYLE DIKTAT" FROM GOVERNMENT ADVISERS, THE TCPA

NATIONAL EMERGENCY ON CLIMATE, HOUSING. ALL BRITISH PLANNING TO BE BYPASSED.
LAND GRAB TO FUND ECO-FEATURES

BUT THERE WILL BE LOCAL PUBLIC ENQUIRIES

In a statement the Town and Country Planning association has advised that

• "national interest" dictates emergency response to climate change and housing shortage
• current plan led system is too slow
• New Towns Act may be used
• planning system must adapt to eco-towns, wherever they are imposed
• use land value windfall from bypassing the planning process to fund more sustainable towns
• public local enquiries
• must be exemplary developments
• community involvement in development and management
• eco-towns research programme to inform future developments

ECO-TOWNS CHALLENGE REPORT HAS BEEN PUBLISHED

The twelve experts advising developers on improving the sustainability of their proposals have reported.
Notes and recommendations from session 1 of Eco-town Challenge

A transformational transport strategy is required to prevent Weston Otmoor becoming "Commuterville".
New form of governance required to enforce strict transport regime.

GRANT SHAPPS MP, Shadow Housing Minister, TONY BALDRY MP visit Wendlebury Meads Nature Reserve

Shapps:
"This is not a proposal the Conservatives are going to be able to support, unless you can get the support of local people"
"You can't simply come along and dump an eco-town in an area and ignore the fact that you are deleting green belt"
"The Housing Minister is leading the developers up the garden path"

Philippa Lyons, Chief Executive, Berks Bucks Oxon Wildlife Trust

"Once it's gone, we can't get it back" WE URGENTLY NEED YOUR HELP!
Weston Otmoor would destroy a site of Special Scientific Interest with a host of wildflowers and two nationally rare butterflies (the brown and black Hairstreak).

OXFORDSHIRE COUNTY COUNCIL SAYS NO THANKS TO FAIT ACCOMPLI,
"WE'RE STANDING UP FOR THE PEOPLE OF BICESTER"

see Report by Head of Sustainable Development and related documents

• eco-credentials "aspirational"
• quarter of the site in green belt
• transport budget significantly short
• serious concerns for health of Bicester
• no support from local planning authority

Listen to County Council Leader Keith Mitchell

Leader's blog: "Weston campaigners make their mark"

WESTON FRONT MEETS PARKRIDGE AND Dept CLG for consultation, 19th June

• attended by Tony Henman and Norman Machin for the Weston Front
• sustainability study and consultation will conclude in October, detailed assessment and shortlist after that
• Parkridge will not have detailed plans ready for a planning application until end of 2009
• off site power and water will probably be required by the proposed town
  

Notes of meeting

HOUSE OF COMMONS: ECO-TOWNS TOPICAL DEBATE, 19th June

• consensus forms around "sustainable urban extensions" or eco-burbs, "mistake to focus only on freestanding new development"
• eco-towns now "triggers of substantial economic growth"
• plan to abandon zero-carbon (level 6) target for housing sustainability a "farce"
• eco-town timetable completely impractical: "a lorry of building material every 20 seconds for the next 10 years"
• Lembit Opik to run his personal aircraft on biofuel, Pennbury eco-town would stop him flying to see his Mum
• Caroline Flint to visit in July or August

Read the Hansard transcript of the debate

Read Tony Baldry, MP's comments

D-DAY NOTICE! - Press release -

We've stopped calling it an "eco-town" because there's nothing "eco" about this proposal - it's a "new town" !!!

Fundraising

We need pledges of money to help get expert advice. Please use the Pledge Form provided and return it to one of the Weston-Front organisers..

Tony Baldry, MP

Tony Baldry, our local MP visited the Weston-Front Campaign offices on Friday, 6th June and gave us his views on the proposals. We are very appreciative of his support - the correspondence he has had with Carolyn Flint the Housing Minister, albeit all one way, demonstrates his concern over the process used by the Government to choose the eco-town sites in the first place.

There was a debate in Westminster Tuesday (3rd June) on Ecotown policy, and you can read a transcript of the debate here..

Parkridge - afraid to be seen in public?

We were approached by the BBC this week because they wanted to use the Weston-Otmoor site as part of a Gardener's World Special on wild flowers. They would also be looking at the changing methods of farming, post WWII, and the effect it had on our countryside - the rise of ecology movement/groups and the need to protect our wildflowers. They would finish with the needs of today - how we manage our needs for development (housing etc) whilst at the same time protecting the needs of our wildlife.

The proposed Eco-town, Weston Otmoor, would appear to exemplify these dilemmas - a proposal of 15,000 Eco-houses on land containing a SSSI and Wildlife Trust protected site - and as such they were considering covering this story within the programme to highlight the issues.

Disappointingly, although we were keen to participate, Parkridge were not and because of this the BBC decided not to choose Weston-Otmoor saying that it was important that they were able to show all sides of the issue.

Parkridge have asked to meet some of the local Parish Councils including Weston on the Green as they are obliged to so under the "rules" set by Government. But they refuse to talk to the public.

Interestingly, Parkridge are using the services of a local Public Relations Company - Mistral - based at Staplehurst Office Centre off the Weston-Bletchington Road.

Eco-towns assessment summaries

The government have just published the results of the initial scrutiny of the proposals in relation to the eco-towns criteria, and where proposals met these, looked across Government and its agencies at the transport and environment issues and opportunities in locations put forward.  There is a summary for each assessment. See page 108 of the document for the issues raised for Weston Otmoor - they include sewerage, water supply, flooding, A34 problems - makes you wonder why they they even contemplated the idea!

Eco - panto!

I suggested the other day that we ought to devise a small pantomime as a bit of a fund-raiser for the Weston Front cause. Having read the Littlehampton Gazette yesterday it appears that the pantomime season has come early to England - check this link out and smile! I'll let you put names to the characters!

Developers request meeting with Parish Council:

Parkridge Holdings have contacted Weston on the Green Parish Council in order to arrange a meeting with them so that they can present an overview of their proposals, an update as to how they are developing and the opportunity to ask questions and raise issues. At the moment though, they say they are unable to undertake a public meeting! I'm aware they have also contacted Wendlebury P.C. as well.
(25 May 2008)

Theft of newts?

They were in fact ecologists employed by Parkridge to survey the area for wild-life. They were interested in knowing whether there are newts in any of the ponds that are on the proposed development site. If they find Great Crested Newts then this would have major implications - see below.

Whether they were bona-fide ecologists remains to be seen - they did not seek the permission of the land owner before they attempted to survey the pond. They have been told they are not welcome. If they were removing great crested newts then they were committing a crime. Not only that, if they were acting on behalf of the developer then that would be a very serious matter and a case for the police to be involved.

Great crested newts are protected under the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981 (as amended), The Conservation (Natural Habitats &c.) Regulations 1994 (as amended) and the Countryside and Rights of Way Act 2000. The protection of great crested newts stems from the overall decline of the species throughout Europe over the last 50 years.

The protection that great crested newts receive makes it illegal to intentionally or recklessly disturb, harm or kill great crested newts.
Therefore the presence of this species on a site is a material consideration where developments are proposed or when considering a change in land use.

Two days after the meeting held in Weston on the Green Village Hall (23rd April), representatives from Parkridge, Central Government, Oxfordshire County Council and Cherwell District Council met at Bodicote House. We have yet to see minutes of that meeting but it is our understanding that an interim Policy Statement will be issued by Cherwell D.C. during July. Oxfordshire C.C have been asked to prepare a statement on environmental issues, and Cherwell D.C. have been asked to prepare a statement on the impact of the proposal on Bicester & Kidlington - by the end of September.
This meeting must have been planned some time ago and it's surprising and disappointing that none of the representatives from O.C.C. or C.D.C. mentioned this to us on the 23rd April.

We were able to meet with Cherwell and discuss the outcome of the above meeting. We have deep reservations over the choice of consultants that Cherwell will use . As Tony Henman stated at the two meetings held on 28th May, it is very important that there should be openness and transparency with the instruction and use of experts.  We are very concerned that the experts being used, nominated and paid for by DCLG and Parkridge will not be impartial.  Members of the public attending both meetings also came out with the same concerns.

Car Stickers

These are available from the village shop, The Chequers public house, or from Philip Minty on 01869 350017

The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) has produced a statement about the proposals