THE 27-year row over a link road for Witney has cost Oxfordshire council taxpayers £4m.

Oxfordshire County Council was refused permission to compulsorily purchase land needed for the £20.5m Cogges Link Road earlier this month, effectively scrapping the scheme after decades.

The £4m bill included £1.4m the council spent on a public inquiry and £700,000 on the objectors’ costs. The rest went on preparing reports, including traffic modelling.

Labour county councillor John Tanner said county council leader Ian Hudspeth “should apologise to the council taxpayers of Oxfordshire for wasting over £4m of our money”.

He added: “If Labour wins a majority in next year’s county council elections, we will implement the much cheaper Shores Green alternative, using the A40 dual carriageway. We will also introduce sensible bus, cycle and pedestrian priority in Witney.”

Mr Hudspeth said “The money was spent to try to solve traffic issues in Witney and given all the evidence we had we were working towards that.

“We have done a lot of work on the traffic modelling in Witney around the Cogges Link Road and some of that will be useful in the future.”

The Cogges Link Road ruling means land to the east of Witney could be the site of a 1,000 homes.

Warwick Robinson, West Oxfordshire District Council cabinet member for strategic planning, said: “For the last 27 years, all development has been determined with the understanding that Cogges Link Road would be a reality.

“It means that we have to re-evaluate the core strategy and give due consideration to all the sites.”

The district council hoped to agree the core strategy – the blueprint for housing in West Oxfordshire – in late autumn, but it could now be delayed by up to six months.