AN INDEPENDENT review could be held into the proposed £120m Oxford Flood Relief Channel amid concerns to areas downstream.

Vale of White Horse District Council will tonight consider a motion for an independent expert to look into the implications of the four-mile channel for Abingdon and surrounding areas.

Sutton Courtenay and Appleford councillor Gervase Duffield, who’s putting forward the motion, said: “Once it’s built no one is going undo it.

“I’m all for sorting out the flooding in Oxford and around Botley Road and the Ock in Abingdon to be sorted , but not at the expense of villages like Sutton Courtenay and Appleford.

“I would like an independent expert to come in, I would trust their judgment.”

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The Environment Agency (EA) with the help of councils and other partners wants to construct a four-mile channel from Seacourt Park and Ride to the River Thames at Sandford Lock.

A series of public consultations took place earlier this month for residents in affected areas to give their views on the details of the scheme.

More developed plans are due to be presented in the autumn before more consultations.

Oxford Flood Alliance member Peter Rawcliffe, who has worked closely with the EA and its partners, said OFA would support an independent review.

The EA has secured £84m of the £120m needed to make the channel a reality.

The funding gap could be plugged by a further round of Government funding and contributions from partners such as Thames Water and Network Rail.

Dr Kate Prendergast of the Sustainable Flood Plan Group welcomed the move and said an independent review into the whole scheme would be beneficial.

“At the cost of hundreds of millions the channel is not the answer we need to look at how water is held upstream.”