NEARLY two million pounds of funding has been signed off to build a new road to the east of Wantage.

The Wantage eastern link road will be funded by £1.951million of funding from the Housing Infrastructure Fund, after Oxfordshire County Council’s cabinet signed an agreement for the money at its meeting on Tuesday, October 15.

The planned relief road is aimed at relieving congestion in Wantage, and will link the A417 to the east of the town with the A338 to the north.

South of the new road is the site of the Kingsgrove estate, a 1,500 home development being built at Crab Hill by St Modwen.

The Oxford Mail went to look around the Kingsgrove estate's new school last month -- read about it here

Residents in the area have previously said the relief road is needed to stop commuters from new estate travelling through the town centre.

Councillor Yvonne Constance, the cabinet member for the environment welcomed the agreement of the funding and noted the impact the thousands of new homes being built at Crab Hill and other sites around the town would have on traffic in the area.

Mrs Constance said: “This is a vitally important bit of infrastructure we are building.”

Vale of White Horse District Council had originally applied for a £7.7million pot of money for the relief road.

This was announced by the then Housing Secretary Sajid Javid and Chancellor Philip Hammond in February last year.

According to a report to cabinet, Homes England only awarded them scheme £1.951million after discussions between the housing agency and Vale district council.

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The report said that Homes England had awarded the £1.951million based on the 222 homes which had been built early on the Kingsgrove estate.

The amount would be enough to ‘plug the shortfall’ in funding for the road, and would allow more homes to be built at Crab Hill.

The overall cost of the relief road is estimated to be £15million.

Funding is coming from the HIF, the Oxfordshire Housing and Growth deal and from the developers of the new homes.

The report also says that building the road will ‘help to accelerate housing delivery on developments such as Crab Hill, Grove Airfield and North West Grove’ .

It adds that a knock-on effect of this will be to make housing in the area more affordable.