WOLVERCOTE residents have accused Oxford City Council of using jargon to make commenting on its Northern Gateway proposals “as hard as possible”.

People have been asked for their views on plans for a business park, 500 homes and a hotel on a triangular piece of land at Pear Tree. That consultation ended on Monday, but the council has faced criticism from villagers over how easy it was for them to respond.

Phillip Dove, of the Wolvercote Commoners’ Committee, said the group had been “besieged with pleas for help” from residents who were concerned about the scheme but did not know how to comment.

He said: “The city council has made the commenting procedure far from easy. Unless one is able to plough through the extensive and sometimes jargon-riddled outline plan, it is almost impossible for the average person to understand.”

Mr Dove said among the WCC’s concerns was extra traffic the scheme could generate, the use of Green Belt land and the impact on views and air quality.

The group set up an advice centre in Wolvercote to help residents fill out feedback forms to send to the city council.

Mr Dove added: “Oxford City Council is determined to forge ahead with its plan of developing the Northern Gateway to a far greater extent than originally outlined.

“It has increased the proposed development of the Northern Gateway by almost 50 per cent over what was originally published and resorted to using designated Green Belt land.

“The present proposal is, to use the council’s terminology, unsound, not justified or legally compliant.”

The city council approved a draft of its “area action plan” for the Northern Gateway in July, at a full council meeting. It has been consulting on it since July 21.

After council officers study the comments, a final version of the document is expected to be produced next month, with a view of it being reviewed by a Government planning inspector early next year. There were calls last month to extend the deadline for comments on the scheme, from Summertown city councillor Jean Fooks.

Oxford City Council spokesman Chofamba Sithole said: “The city council has worked hard to make the wording of the area action plan as accessible as possible.

“The document it produced is supported by a range of papers, which explain the plan in simple language and through an evidence base provide technical information to back up the policies.

“The Northern Gateway comment form is a statutory requirement and we were constrained by the Government’s Planning Inspectorate guidance as to what it covered and how it was written.

“We produced extensive guidance to help people complete it.”

He added that people were able to email or post comments and that copies of a leaflet on the scheme were hand-delivered to properties in the area homes.

Some of the document's phrases

“The Knowledge Spine” - “The Northern Gateway is the only undeveloped strategic employment-led allocation in the city and it is the last opportunity to deliver employment development on this scale as part of the ‘knowledge spine’.”

Transport measures - “The Core Strategy clearly states that development on this site will be expected to incorporate a package of transport measures including capacity improvements to roads and junctions and demand management measures to mitigate the impact of the development on the local and strategic road network.”

 Flooding - “The Northern Gateway lies entirely within Flood Zone 1 which is the lowest risk classification, although the city-wide Strategic Flood Risk Assessment identifies that part of the site is prone to non-fluvial surface water flooding.”

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