City has to find site for homes (From Oxford Mail)

City has to find site for homes

7:00am Thursday 27th May 2010 in

By Chris Buratta »

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A PROPOSAL to build 4,000 homes south of Greater Leys is set to be killed off by changes to the planning process.

The controversial development, south of Grenoble Road has been in the pipeline since 2002.

But the new coalition Government plans to ditch the South East Plan – a blueprint for development until 2026 – and give power to local councils to decide where houses should be built.

Under the coalition’s planned Devolution and Localism Bill, the decision over the future of the scheme will lie with South Oxfordshire District Council (SODC), which opposes the scheme.

Last night, city council leader Bob Price said the situation was disappointing, but not unexpected.

He added he planned to discuss the matter with SODC but said if the last-ditch talks failed, the council could be forced to increase housing numbers at other development sites in the city including Oxpens, Barton West and at the Northern Gateway, near Pear Tree.

He added: “We have lots of infill sites but we are resistant to urban cramming and we do not want, under any circumstances, to encroach on the city’s green lungs.

“It creates a huge ongoing problem in developing the housing we have identified is needed by the city over the next 10 to 15 years.”

Oxford East MP Andrew Smith has put a question in the Commons to the new Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, Eric Pickles, asking about the “supply of housing in central Oxfordshire”.

Mr Smith said: “If, as reported, the coalition Government simply leaves the planning of housing to district councils, it puts Oxford in an impossible position. The city’s boundaries are so tight against the built-up area that there is wholly insufficient land within its control to plan and provide the housing the city desperately needs.”

Angie Paterson, SODC’s cabinet member for planning, said the council continued to support the protection of the Green Belt.

The Oxfordshire branch of the Campaign for the Protection of Rural England took High Court action over the plan last year.

CPRE campaign manager Helena Whall said: “This is the end of building in the Green Belt in the south of the city but may well open a can of worms north of Oxford as far as we’re concerned.”

cburatta@oxfordmail.co.uk What do you think about the city’s housing situation? Email news@oxfordmail.co.uk

Comments(14)

Lord Palmerstone says...
7:12am Thu 27 May 10

Allowing for realistic welfare reforms which remove the incentive for the feckless to reproduce, accepting the fact that non-feckless women want a career and have children later and in the hope that the government recognises the imperative that immigration be halted, projections as to the necessity of concreting over more of our food growing land may be too pessimistic. Not to mention that more concreting, when we are so much at the mercy of imported food, is downright insanity.