I ATTENDED the first afternoon of the examination in public of the West Oxfordshire Local Plan which is supposed to guide the future development of the area taking into account social, environmental and economic factors.

However, of the 30 participants, 25 were developers or their representatives.

The developers have little, if any, interest in the overall plan for West Oxfordshire.

Their concern is in getting planning permission for their own sites.

How can a proper examination of the plan take place when the meeting is overwhelmingly dominated by developers with specific vested interests?

Even worse, one of the developers is represented by the same consultancy that wrote the Strategic Housing Market Assessment (SHMA) for the Oxfordshire’s councils.

This seems to me to be a scandalous conflict of interest.

The SHMA sets the overall policies and context for all the Oxfordshire Local Plans.

It is supposedly an objective assessment of Oxfordshire’s housing needs over 20 years, though many people thought the figures were much, much too high.

How can a consultant produce an objective and independent assessment for the councils in the overall public interest while at the same time represent private developers with large financial interests?

Surely this undermines any claims that the SHMA was an independent and objective document.

None of this has been questioned at the examination.

I have never before felt so disenfranchised and disempowered.

The government has said that it is putting planning in the hands of local people.

It is not. It is putting planning in the hands of the developers.

ALAN LODWICK

Church Street,

Kidlington