THE first evening newspaper I worked for was the Swindon Evening Advertiser.

Near the end of my 11 months there as a Westminster Press trainee journalist the editor received a rocket from London.

Despite the town expanding by 10,000 to provide homes for London’s overspill, the paper’s circulation had not increased by a copy. I was despatched post haste to write in-depth feature articles about all the new estates.

At the time my overwhelming feeling was one of frustration. The newsdesk had not a single contact living on any of them. I went from door to door piecing together the information for my first article. To add to it, I was on the point of moving to the altogether more prestigious Oxford Mail and Times. In fact, I took my notebook with me and filed my last report from my native city.

Looking back, it was a once-in-a-lifetime experience. Once Swindon’s planners grasped what I was about they co-operated fully. I was able to chart how they learnt from their mistakes and developed a recipe for well-balanced communities with the right infrastructure, helping Swindon to become the vibrant, go-getting centre it is today.

Observing the grilling the leader of Oxfordshire County Council, Ian Hudspeth, and the leader of West Oxfordshire District Council, James Mills, received from a packed audience of passionate, well-informed, by no means nimbyish local residents in Eynsham Village Hall on December 5, brought the memories flooding back.

In deciding the future of the A40, the proposed Tilgarsley garden village north of it to house some of Oxford’s overspill and another major development to the west of Eynsham they and their planning teams have no margin of error for the sort of mistakes that have bedevilled the production of the West Oxfordshire Local Plan, the long procrastination that has delayed the construction of the Shores Green interchange or the failure to start work on the slip road at Wolvercote roundabout to link the A40 to the A34.

I doubt I will live to see the outcome. 

If I last that long I will be 97 in 2030! But I pray for the sake of the part of the world I have loved all my life they get it right.


DON CHAPMAN