WEST Oxfordshire District Council has passed its 2015-2031 Local Plan which will now go for public examination by a Government inspector.

WODC is adamant that this plan is evidence-based.

This, despite 12 of its councillors speaking out within the debate against the plan’s unsoundness by including the flawed North Witney site within the plan – a site inextricably linked with the promotion of the proposed West End link road.

We are therefore astonished that Councillor Warwick Robinson who, as the council’s portfolio holder for strategic planning, and lead cabinet councillor for delivering this plan, is quoted as saying: “I also believe there are a lot of people who live in West End who will be overjoyed to find they don’t have a permanent line of traffic outside their doors.”

The evidence is, in fact, completely the opposite, according to Oxfordshire County Council’s Highways Traffic Modelling Forecast prepared for the Governmentrejected Cogges Link Road project (another intransigent lost cause supported by WODC).

The county council’s highways statistics clearly show that upgrading the Shore’s Green junction (which is to be quite rightly built first) reduces traffic in West End; but then adding the West End Link road, (integral to attempting to make North Witney deliverable) increases traffic in West End by an unacceptable 52.5 per cent.

This will make West End traffic levels greater than at any time in its history.

STUART HARRISON Chairman North Witney Action Group