7:17pm Wednesday 14th April 2010
By Chris Buratta
A PROPOSAL to build a huge business park in North Oxford has been scaled down by city planners.
Oxford City Council has been forced to trim the size of the planned Northern Gateway development, near Pear Tree Roundabout, after officers accepted a proposal to build 4,000 homes south of Greater Leys may never happen.
Because there are now thousands of fewer homes in the pipeline, the council has had to scale down the proposed northern development in order to maintain a jobs-to-homes balance in the city.
Job forecasts for the site have been reduced from 5,000 to 3,000, and the council’s new core strategy blueprint suggests the site will now be spread over 55,000sq m of floor space, rather than the previous figure of up to 80,000sq m.
Michael Crofton-Briggs, the council’s head of city development, said: “Because we cannot assume there is going to be extra housing south of Grenoble Road, we have to look at the housing/job balance in Oxf-ord.”
The council revised its core strategy document, which shows how Oxford will grow in the period to 2026, because of an ongoing legal challenge to the Government’s South East Plan proposal to build the 4,000 homes near Grenoble Road.
Officers have pushed ahead with the revised document, based on the assumption there will be no development south of the city.
They have called on the public to give their views on the change to the Northern Gateway propsals and to the core strategy as a whole.
A spokesman for Engage Oxford, a campaign group set up to oppose the Northern Gateway development, said: “A public meeting held in January unanimously condemned the core strategy.
“It is unclear why the city council is continuing to push forward a plan which does not have the support of residents.
“The case for the Northern Gateway proposal is fundamentally flawed. No amount of tinkering around with the evidence base alters that fact.”
The six-week public consultation on the revised strategy closes on May 21.
People who have already made comments during a previous consultation do not need to resubmit their views.
cburatta@oxfordmail.co.uk For further information go to oxford.gov.uk/ consultation
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