Weston/Otmoor Ecotown proposal

As a former Housing Minister, I fully support the Government's desire that there should be more affordable housing.

There are a number of major developments shortly to start construction in the Cherwell District, all of which have been identified through a local plan led planning system.

In Banbury, there is the Bankside/Bodicote development where construction should commence in 2008/9 for 1,070 houses, including 320 (30%) affordable.

Approximately 700 net additional dwellings (including affordable housing) are also planned for the former RAF Upper Heyford site. A Supplementary Planning Document has been prepared and an application considered. An inquiry into the application proposals is due to start in September The main area of contention is expected to be the amount of commercial space to be allowed in this development.

In Bicester, the construction on what is known as the "South West Option" will begin this yea and will result in 1,585 new houses, about 475 (30%) of which will be affordable.

The Upper Heyford development illustrates an important point. It has been a good ten years since a consortium of the major UK house building companies bought this site from the MOD.

Local Planning authorities, such as Cherwell, can facilitate housing construction by granting planning permissions but the pace of housing construction following the granting of such permission is then a commercial decision entirely under the control of the house builders and in turn to a large extent dictated by what is happening in the housing market.

Also, so far as social housing is concerned, even with the benefit of planning gain and Section 106 Agreements, for social housing schemes to work, they almost always need a financial contribution from the Housing Corporation and Housing Corporation allocations to housing associations working in the Cherwell district have not been particularly generous.

So it is a complete travesty and caricature of the facts to suggest that Local Authorities in my constituency are anything other than keen to support new house building and wherever possible the construction of new social housing and it is also a caricature to give the impression that the only way that new affordable or social housing can be delivered is through Ecotowns.

In addition to the new housing in Banbury, Bicester, and Upper Heyford, there is steady development of new housing in many of the larger villages in my constituency, and many villages, including for example Weston-on-the-Green would like to see further housing in their villages, but find that the present planning system militates against such development and they understandably find it somewhat perverse that on the one hand there is a planning system in place which is preventing modest expansion of existing settlements, whilst without any reference to the regional spatial strategy, or any sub-regional spatial strategy is possibly going to allow a very substantial new development on a Green Field/Green Belt site.

My objections to the Weston/Otmoor proposal are as follows:

Firstly, Cherwell District Council has sought to deliver on the housing figures as requested by Government over the appropriate timescales. This has included the Council resolving to bring forward all of its planned allocations in the interests of maintaining required levels of housing delivery.

If the Government is saying that it wants Local Authorities in the South East including Cherwell to grant planning permission for more houses in the immediate future, then the Government should say that, and then allow Cherwell and local councillors through the appropriate planning mechanisms to identify suitable sites for new housing construction.

Secondly, I can think of no example since the introduction in the post war Labour Government of the general principles of town and country planning which still underpin our planning system where Ministers have sought to issue site specific planning guidance to Local Authorities.

It is an abuse of the English language for Ministers to say that these Ecotown proposals will go through the normal planning system when Ministers are going to introduce abnormal and unprecedented planning policy statements to effectively direct where such Ecotowns should be built.

Thirdly, there are a number of specific reasons why the Weston/Otmoor proposal is in my judgement a crazy idea and should be dropped forthwith from the Government's shortlist.

It would destroy an area of English countryside of high environmental and ecological value. This has been well explained to Ministers in the submissions by leading environmental NGOs, such as BBOWT, the combined Naturalist Trusts, and the RSPB. The combined Naturalist Trusts have expressed serious concerns. BBOWT has said "This development cannot be called an "Ecotown" if it destroys local ecology", and observes that "If Weston/Otmoor went ahead the pressures on this fragile landscape would be so great that the habitat would degrade and England's biodiversity would be dealt a serious blow." BBOWT is particularly concerned about the impact of the Woodsides Meadow Nature Reserve which is part of a large complex of traditional wild flower meadows called Wendlebury Meads Grassland that has remained undisturbed for centuries. The RSPB has said "We have significant objections to the proposal for Weston/Otmoor due to their potential impact on important designated wildlife sites. This site should not proceed to the final shortlist and must be dropped immediately."

The fact is that the Weston/Otmoor Ecotown proposal is a completely friendless policy supported so far only by the developers and the Government. Every organisation concerned with the countryside, environment and ecology, is opposed to this site, and the Government's own advisory panel on Ecotowns, notwithstanding that there is not a single ecology specialist on that panel, concluded so far as the Weston/Otmoor site is concerned, that "the Government needs to " . . . explain what would prevent the town from becoming "commuterville" ".

I would simply observe that if one drives up the M40 from London to Birmingham, shortly after passing Oxford, the motorway travels around quite a wide curve. This is no accident.

25 years ago, when I was first elected to the House of Commons, I was much involved with work to see the completion of the M40 from Oxford to Birmingham. The completion of that motorway was obviously going to be of enormous benefit to my constituents, but Douglas Hurd, who was then my neighbour and MP for Witney, and myself, were also anxious that the construction of the M40 should not destroy the unique ecology and environment of Otmoor, and we thus managed to persuade Ministers, that notwithstanding the substantial extra cost involved with building a motorway longer than it might otherwise have been, that it was right to construct the motorway around Otmoor, rather than straight across Otmoor as had originally been proposed by the Government's Highways Engineers.

My next objection to the Weston/Otmoor site is a practical one.

I do not believe that the Ministers will find anyone who thinks that it would be possible to build a new town and effectively ban people from owning cars.

It is fanciful to believe that the building of a new town at Weston/Otmoor wouldn't do anything other than to generate substantial amounts of new traffic movements in the area.

The A34 and the M40 between junctions 9 and 10 are already a nightmare.

When the M40 was designed and built, I don't think that the Highway Engineers fully appreciated the volume of HGV traffic that would come up from Southampton along the A34 to junction 9, and then travel along the M40 to junction 10, prior to turning northwards to Northampton.

These roads at many times are near their capacity, and if one gridlocks the A34, and the M40, one effectively grid locks a large part of the West Midlands.

Ministers and Government officials have made much of the developers' so-called infrastructure proposal. In short, this basically boils down to a new railway station. Setting aside the idea that residents of this new town would forego cars and seek to go everywhere by train and tram is completely fanciful. The railway station in the Weston/Otmoor Ecotown proposal demonstrates a fundamental contradiction in this proposal. You have said that there will be no houses built on the Green Belt in an Ecotown development.

Some 30% of Parkridge's proposed development is within the Green Belt. Most significantly, the proposed railway station is within the Green Belt.

It would be a very bizarre outcome if Ministers from the outset had been so forthright in making it clear that no housing would be constructed in the Green belt, and yet were to allow large scale commercial developments in the Green Belt.

Moreover, I am sure that Ministers would recognise that it would be thought at best misleading, and at worst disingenuous, if Ministers had sought to give the impression that they were not going to allow House Building on the Green Belt, and thus to give the impression that Green Belt land was going to be protected from development when all along it was the intention of Ministers to allow commercial development to take place on the Green Belt.

The signals from Ministers on just what they are and are not going to allow to happen on the Green Belt have been somewhat mixed. Baroness Andrews told the House of Lords on 2nd June categorically that "We will not build on the Green Belt". If that is the Government's "Line to Take", it is one that does not appear to have been understood by Parkridge.

If Ministers are serious about protecting the Green Belt, then that is yet another reason why it would be sensible to drop the Weston/Otmoor proposal immediately from the short list as there is no way this proposal can go forward without destroying a substantial chunk of the Oxford Green belt.

There are also serious concerns about the viability of Parkridge's railway proposals. The County Council has carried out a detailed assessment and analysis of the railway proposals (this can be found at here )

Parkridge has set aside £150 million for their rail proposals. This would appear to be nowhere near enough.

Parkridge propose using double-deck carriages which are three feet higher than conventional carriages which will result in having to raise a number of bridges and tunnels.

A 4 unit diesel train costs approximately £pound;5.5 million. Parkridge are likely to need 24 x 4 unit diesel trains costing £132 million alone.

There is no sign of any indication where there might be a rail depot for such rolling stock.

Tram trains are low floor vehicles and will not work on Oxford's existing platforms so the stations will need conversion for double-deck trains.

Much of the rail track into to Oxford is at maximum capacity - no indication that Parkridge has addressed this issue with the railway industry.

Wolvercote Tunnel - this is 132 yards long. Currently single track to provide clearance for tall container traffic. Difficult to see how to provide twin track running and secure clearance.

Parkridge propose major rebuilding of Oxford station to accommodate tram trains.

Signalling is another constraint. It is highly technical, major changes are not planned until 2017 and it is unclear how Parkridge will be able to provide their promised increase in services until re-signalling has been completed.

Parkridge proposing a direct train service from the development to London Marylebone via a new Bicester Chord. This seems contrary to the objective of creating a sustainable community where local employment is provided for residents and commuting is minimised.

The whole area relating to the rail tram services is a legal minefield, and the framework under which the train and tram services will operate is unclear.

Parkridge seem to think it will be their own private railway.

My last and very serious objection to this proposed Ecotown relates to the vitality and viability of Bicester

Bicester is, and has for some time, been one of the fastest growing towns in England.

Bicester has delivered for the Government on housing numbers big time, but Bicester desperately needs economic growth to rebalance itself and to become more sustainable.

In the last ten to fifteens years or so we have seen the building of the Langford Village estate, (about 1,500 houses), the Southwold Estate, (about 1,000 houses), Bicester Fields Farm (about 550 houses) , and the Bure Park Estate, (about 1,100 houses).

This has been very considerable growth of a town over a comparatively short period of time. So Bicester has many of the characteristics of a new town, without having the infrastructure that one would expect with a new town.

70% of those who live in Bicester go outside of the town to work as the employment base in Bicester has not kept pace with the rapid expansion of housing.

It is fanciful to believe that it would be possible to build a new town effectively the size of Bicester so near to Bicester without that new town having a serious impact on the vitality and viability as a community and economically.

Indeed, this is one of the more serious risks of seeking to by pass all existing planning processes that the Government simply isn't giving itself sufficient time to properly assess everything from the impact of the proposed Weston/Otmoor development on Bicester, to the impact of the proposed Weston/Otmoor development on the hydrology of Otmoor.

For all of the above reasons, I would suggest that the Government should make it clear at the earliest possible opportunity that the Weston/Otmoor proposal is being dropped from the list of possible Ecotown sites.



Rosemary Hadow
Office of Tony Baldry MP
House of Commons
London SW1A0AA

Tel: 020 7219 6465

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