CAMPAIGNERS battling to save Oxford’s Green Belt are bracing themselves for a double blow.

The Oxford Mail understands that the Government is preparing to instruct the city to build thousands of homes south of Grenoble Road, as a new extension to Oxford.

The announcement is expected to be made over the next few weeks, with the Government also likely to increase the number of homes earmarked for Oxfordshire in the South East Plan.

Oxfordshire County Council leader Keith Mitchell said: “I think we are likely to get an instruction from Government to build at Grenoble Road. If that is the case we have to move forward and make sure we end up with a balanced sustainable community and not a huge quantity of one type of housing.”

News that South Oxfordshire District Council is to press for a Green Belt review to allow 150 homes to be built at Berinsfield and also at Wheatley came as a further shock for Green Belt supporters.

SODC has stood against any redrawing of the Green Belt around Oxford to allow 4,000 homes to be built on land near the Kassam Stadium, owned by Magdalen College and Thames Water.

The Campaign to Protect Rural England, which has just launched a ‘Hands Off Oxford’s Green Belt’, campaign says it is appalled by the “damaging U-turn” by SODC.

But SODC insists that a selective Green Belt review is justified by exceptional circumstances, with the Green Belt now inhibiting the regeneration of Berinsfield and there being a strong case for linking the Wheatley Bridge area to Wheatley.

Dr Helena Whall, campaign manager for the Oxfordshire branch of the CPRE, said: “We have learned that SODC, which professes to be opposed to the urban extension of Oxford into the Green Belt, is nevertheless itself proposing two breaches of the Green Belt at Berinsfield and Wheatley. It is guilty of double standards.

“It goes without saying that these proposals represent serious, further threats to the integrity and future of the Green Belt, the permanence of which is so important to us all.”

Angie Paterson, SODC’s cabinet member for planning, said: “The Government has told us we need to find room for 10,000 new homes in the district over the next 20 years, which, given its predominantly rural nature, means making some tough decisions.”

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