NWAG Comments: West Oxfordshire District Council (WODC) Planning Portal

22^nd June 2026

The North Witney Action Group has again renewed its objection to the development responding with the following comments when the Consortium lodged another application with WODC. This submission was uploaded on to the WODC planning portal on 22nd  June 2026.

All documents relating to the proposed development are available on this portal -https://share.google/EZYO6etNjtXMmHQSi

The submission is reproduced here.

(This narrative should be read in conjunction with the NWAG submission of April 11, 2024, which appears earlier in the comments on this platform.  Please see glossary at the foot of this document for full name of acronyms used.)

As a matter of Fact, in terms of the known cost of infrastructure, this SDA as we have made forensically clear since 2014, is not viable. Audited or published Infrastructure costs at 2024 BCIS prices is £91.3m translating to a build cost levy of £73k per dwelling. Ref: NWAG submission to WODC 2043 Local Plan Consultation.

In the adoption of the WODC 2031 Local Plan, the Planning Inspector made it abundantly clear that the North Witney SDA was predicated on the building of the West End Link (WEL). “Evidence demonstrates that to be acceptable in transport terms…. development would require the construction of the West End link, a road which would have significant wider benefits for Witney……the plan appropriately remains clear in stating that the road will be required for the full development.”

Ref: p34/66 Para 129 Inspector’s Report on the Examination of the 2031 Local Plan.

Significantly the 2009 original premise on why such a controversial site was allowed to come forward was predicated on a commitment by the North Witney Consortium to “fund in full” the West End Link.

Ref: ‘New Housing Development for Witney’ Consortium submission to WODC, 2009.

The current reviewed application for 1,250 homes on a site distanced from Witney by narrow historic roads, seeks at every turn to depend entirely on the ideology of Active Travel England’s Objective of “making walking, wheeling and cycling the preferred choice of everyone to get around England….”.

The consortium’s justification for this seismic change to WIT2 (referenced in the Local Plan 2031) infrastructure is dependent on a plethora of ‘Dutch’ roundabouts, coloured routes, enhanced paths & cycle lanes and ‘control’ junctions attempting to mitigate against an additional deluge of motor traffic converging on Witney, or beyond Witney, via the narrow roads, neighbourhoods and villages. There are no employment sites nor major retailers included anywhere near the SDA in both the current 2031 and 2043 Local Plan to justify this reliance on Active Travel.

When you are staring at a £90 million plus spreadsheet of Section106 mandatory infrastructure costs, the opportunity to promote an Active Travel plan as an alternative to an expensive, but key, piece of strategic infrastructure required by the Planning Inspector and agreed by the Consortium since 2009 to validate the site, becomes something of a gift.

Opportunistically this reviewed application believes it can convince through an over emphasis on cycling, walking and public transport that the West End link (WEL) is not required and therefore removes, at a stroke, over £30million of S106+ responsibility from the Consortium.

Beginning in December 2024, through to the Spring of 2026, the Applicant has worn away at Oxfordshire County Council as the statutory Highways Authority through a series of minuted meetings to raise Active Travel as the solution to being given planning permission.

Ref: Transport Assessment Part 1, Appendix B.

Of course, Active Travel can enhance the overall quality of life, but here it does not address the strategic issue of a considerable amount of traffic entering and exiting the major development through narrow and existing roads. And, as the Applicant’s transport consultant concedes “would likely be introduced within Witney irrespective of the Proposed Development coming forward…”  Ref: ES-V2-Appendix 7.1 (4.1.13)

To conclude by assumption throughout this renewed submission that Decide and Provide can replace WEL requires an extraordinary stretching of statistics. For example, the key justification for this relates to a comparison of the Norwegian inner city area of Bergen, the country’s second city, on the fringe of the University campus and, as it happens, extremely well known through family to the author of this text. A comparison to a remote area of an historic English market town is as far removed as possible!

In this new appraisal the applicant dubiously comes up with an overall 23.25% reduction in the Trip Rate entering and exiting the SDA. But this discount rate is simply wrong.

The neighbourhoods selected to achieve *6.75% of the 23.25% figure, Schofield Avenue and Campion Way, are serviced by local centres which include two major food retailers, two hairdressers, a beauty salon, a chiropractor, two fish and chip shops, a fuel station, a launderette, two other food take aways (and five infant schools and a community hall) all within 200 metres, yet the model claims the two areas’ facilities have a ‘significantly reduced offer.’  (*Ref: Jubb, TN23 - 3^rd issue Scoping for Revised Transport Modelling, Section 4.4.)

Similarly, Jubb has unjustifiably claimed a further **6.25% adjustment for active travel that already exists. Both cordons used in this example, Schofield Avenue and Campion Way, already have long established and direct cycle, wheeling, and walking routes, extensively used by residents, and clearly marked by WODC and published in their ‘Witney Cycle Map’, and also shown on Google maps.

Combined, these two unwarranted adjustments of *6.75% and **6.25% (total 13%) should, by rights, reduce the overall trip-rate adjustment figure from 23.25% (TN23, 4.6) down to just 10.25%.

Clearly the cost and the removal of WEL is uppermost in the Applicant’s mind. In the minutes of these meetings with OCC, it is the Applicant who presses the Highways Authority to remove WEL. Take January 30, 2025. The minutes say the Applicant again questioned the possible removal of WEL, with a clear reference to the S106 contributions, indicating that money, rather than strategy, was the root of the question. Correctly, OCC retorted “that the need would be dictated by the traffic modelling…” (Ref: Transport Assessment Part 1, Appendix B. Jan 30, 2025, Item 6.0 (p130/200).

Not content, the questioning continued through later meetings with comments such as “…queried whether OCC had any further views on WEL (i.e. is the view that this strategy be excluded now….)” and “whether there was further information on this study and whether introduction of an active travel solution represented a shift in favour for OCC.” (Ref: Appendix B, 30 January 2025 (p129/200) & 28 April 2025 (p130/200))

The theme here is so blindingly obvious; remove WEL at all costs. Alarmingly, as later minutes reveal, by February 2026, the text shows an almost resigned acceptance by OCC of all the promises being made to deliver everything but WEL.

Indeed, the desperation to not include WEL as integral to the strategy can be summed up with the introduction of the ‘Woodford Mill Crossing’ “which is proposed active travel link between West End and Woodford Mill in lieu of the WEL…”. This is a footpath and cycle route already in existence. You simply cannot substitute a significant piece of critical highways infrastructure already in the current LP with an elevated cycle route with two existing and acknowledged pinch points. (JUBB cycle/walkway boardwalk). (Ref: Turley Covering Letter 26/05/26, ‘Transport’.)

CONCLUSION

The sole reason this new Application is tilted towards Active Travel England is not altruistic but in the hope that WEL will be removed because, as has always been the case, this SDA is not Viable. Either WEL, which since 2009 has been inextricably linked by a “fund in full” promise from the Consortium to any development, is built prior to any incursion of development, or the site is removed from the planning process on which it is entirely premised.

That was a promise by the applicant which allowed the site to be considered by WODC in 2009. If the Highways Authority now deem it to have delivery challenges, risks, and unaffordable costs then that removes any justification for development and demands that the site be removed from the Local Plan.

We call on all Councillors at both County and District not to allow strategic infrastructure costs and especially WEL to be either watered down or removed. WEL, as the 2031 Planning Inspector instructed, is enshrined in the Local Plan and must be built before North Witney is developed. If not, and development is allowed, the outcome will prove a disaster for the wider community of North & East Witney, the surrounding villages, especially Crawley, Hailey, New Yatt, and North Leigh and, critically, the historic town itself.

North Witney Action Group (NWAG) June 2026

Glossary (Not included in submission)

AT Active Travel. Any journey made from one place to another using your own physical body power. It replaces motor vehicles with human exertion - the main types are walking, cycling, and wheeling.

BCIS Building Cost Information Service

LP Local Plan. The West Oxfordshire Local Plan was formally adopted on 27 September 2018 and sets out the overall planning framework for the district from 2011 to 2031

OCC Oxfordshire County Council

Section 106 A legally binding contract between a local planning authority and a developer

SDA Strategic Development Area. A large piece of land designated in a local plan for major building projects like new housing estates and business parks

WEL West End Link

WODC West Oxfordshire District Council

WIT2 On page 154 of the above Local Plan: ‘development to be phased in accordance with the timing of provision of supporting infrastructure and facilities including the essential delivery of the West End Link…’

This is a huge response to the petition calling on West Oxfordshire District Council to reconsider the flawed North Witney development. It's also well past the tipping point of 1,500 signatures whereby WODC has to formally reconsider the development. A huge thank you to everyone who signed the petition and to councillors Duncan Enright and Richard Langridge who organised it. Over to you WODC, your constituents have spoken.

NWAG's Chairman, Stuart Harrison, argues the powerful case for preserving the landscape of North Witney. The feature appeared in the Witney Gazette, The Oxford Times and Oxford Mail. A full transcript of the article appears below the photograph.

The article in the Oxford Times on 7th May, 2020 (© The Oxford Times/Newsquest)

Classic FM listeners have, for the second consecutive year, voted Vaughan Williams’s The Lark Ascending, Britain’s favourite piece of classical music. But, in reality, this wondrous piece of human endeavour is incomparable to the hundreds of syllables that burst forth in one song as an exaltation of sky larks sore above ancient farm land between Witney and Hailey. Like the sky lark this land too undulates, rising eventually to the 105 metre contour beneath Poffley End, one of three settlements that make up the village of Hailey. For this beautiful landscape, from the edge of urban Witney in the south, to Downhill Farm in the north and Merryfield Farm to the east, is both designated part of the Wychwood Project and all in the parish of Hailey. For the rambler to pause by the copse below Downhill Farm offers you perhaps the best view you will ever find of the spire of St Mary’s Church Witney.

These richly fertile fields produce nearly half a million loaves of bread each year. Through the heart of this acreage a dual hedge row, aged through its wide variety of flora and fauna, defines a water meadow valley, while three small streams meander to converge at the foot of the land. But there, sadly, we must leave this idyllic scene. For those streams also bring hazard and danger, contributing to the threat of flooding of existing homes within Witney; homes which border the southern boundary of the fields that are coldly and unemotionally referred to in West Oxfordshire District Council’s Local Plan as the North Witney Strategic Development Area. All surface water from these fields feed in to a small drainage pipe of less than a metre, euphemistically known as ‘the Hailey Drain.’ Much of the flooding in Witney eminates from the 63,000 cubic metres of water that flow annually off these fields through the Hailey Drain and to the River Windrush. As yet no plan has been put forward to mitigate against the existing and historic flooding of homes and businesses in Witney, and especially Eastfield Road, Hailey Road, West End, Bridge Street and Woodford Mill, that occur regularly and, in 2007, spectacularly and tragically.

Everyone remembers those pictures of David Cameron wading through the knee deep waters of Bridge Street; flooding that caused devastation and cut the town in two. Yet WODC wants to add to this threat by concreting over these 148 acres with 1400 homes and scar the landscape with a ‘north perimeter road’. To achieve that they also want to first build (at the last design) an eleven dual pillared bridge know as the West End Link across the two arms of the River Windrush and, of course, the flood plain. Piling in to the flood plain just yards from homes in Woodford Mill, Mill Street and Bridge Street. A span of 190m of the Windrush Valley flood plain.

Once this road bridge arrives at the frequently flooded Cannon Pool, the name of the the three-way junction of Hailey Road, West End and Crawley Road, this so called ‘perimeter road’ then creates air quality management issues in the narrow and conservation area of West End. The street made famous in that First World War poem “ There’s an old fashioned house in an old fashioned street” will see a three to four-fold increase in volume of traffic. The heavily populated Hailey Road, home to the 200 pupil Witney Community Primary School, becomes the third busiest road in Witney. Indeed, the calculation is of at least 3000 additional vehicles to these narrow streets. This is not a perimeter road but an overload to an existing inadequate road system.

Everyone but the entrenched WODC ruling Conservative Party is opposed to this flawed development. All Labour, Liberal Democrat and Green party councillors on both WODC and Witney Town Council oppose it. Hailey Parish Council oppose it. The North Witney Ward of WODC has two representatives, both were Conservative members.

Richard Langridge, who had represented the Ward for 12 years and was a member of the Cabinet, would not vote for the inclusion of the development in the Local Plan. Hours before the vote he was invited by James Mills, leader of WODC to reconsider his position. He continued to take a stand in support of his local electorate and was removed, first from the Cabinet and then eventually from the Conservative ticket. In May 2019 he stood as an Independent and soundly retained his seat with the support of an appreciative electorate.

The second member for the North Witney Ward is the Council’s deputy leader Toby Morris. On each occasion the inclusion of the North Witney development has been discussed, including the final debate when the Local Plan was approved, he has held the mantra “You will never hear me say a good word in favour of this development.....” then voted for its inclusion.

When, at the beginning of this journey nearly a decade ago, I addressed the full WODC meeting on behalf of our emerging community action group, I appealed to the councillors’ sense of civic duty. I said that if the great blanket maker benefactors that had built the foundations of this wonderful town were here today they would say, as many of us do, that as councillors, WODC have been good stewards of the town. What has been achieved in Witney since the closure in the 1970’s of much of our historic manufacturing, especially engineering and blanket making, has been excellent. Indeed, the town has fulfilled its motto of flourishing, Ingenio Floremus “With Ingenuity We Flourish”. However, I concluded by saying that to allocate this land for development would change the face of Witney, Hailey, New Yatt and North Leigh “detrimentally and beyond measure”.

I had to make such an impassioned plea on behalf of the local community aware that behind me sat ranks of sharp suited consultants representing and guarding the profits of big builders, each flicking through a slick document of photographs and profiles of the councillors I was appealing to. Their intimidating presence only served to strengthen my resolve.

Life in our communities is changing rapidly. There is more windfall housing being built in West Oxfordshire than first forecast in the Local Plan housing numbers. Brexit is next year. Economic slowdown from these unparalled times we are now living in and the predicted downward cost of buying a house, will affect both housing numbers and the timetable, especially in developments such as the complex and costly North Witney where infrastructure could spiral over £40m. Infrastructure costs which we believe already make this development unsustainable. Another real fear is that WODC capitulate to allow houses to be built and profit taken before that infrastructure is in place.

The WODC Local Plan has to be reviewed by September 2023. If the 4,400 homes set out in the 2011-31 plan for Witney have to be achieved, then there is a perfectly acceptable alternative to concreting over the fields between Witney and Hailey, bringing dire flooding prospects and alarming traffic and air quality management issues to the town. The alternative is adjacent to the A40, now undisputedly the Witney by pass, with easy access to a recently improved super junction. It is on land all owned by one willing family and has one reputable and established developer. This alternative could also provide a significant and much needed contribution to the funding of a comprehensive solution to the A40. Ends

We seriously question why Taylor Wimpey have put in a planning application to develop the part of the North Witney SDA between Woodstock Road and New Yatt Road. Is their intention to cherry pick sites without making commitments to infrastructure improvements? Read NWAG's opposition to Taylor Wimpey's planning application.

Here are some questions that we believe Toby Morris, Deputy Leader of West Oxfordshire District Council, Leader of Witney Town Council, and one of the councillors representing North Witney on WODC needs to answer

Why is Cllr Morris quoted in the minutes of a debate at the town council over their submission on the Local Plan on December 14th, as saying ‘The development of North Witney was something that the inspector had asked for’?

The inspector did not say this or anything that could be construed as meaning this. Cllr Morris approved the minutes.

Why is Cllr Morris actively supporting the North Witney development when he is quoted as saying the following in the Witney Gazette on 8th March ‘Mr Morris added that he thought the town council's submission on the Local Plan, prepared by the chairman of the planning committee, Alan Beames, was not strong enough in its concerns over the North Witney site."

Could it be that he is having his arm twisted from higher up in WODC? In the same way that every WODC Conservative Councillor received a phone call before the vote on the Local Plan telling them to approve it. The one Conservative Councillor who actively opposed the Plan - on the grounds that the North Witney development is totally unsound - was fired from his position on WODC planning committee hours before this meeting. This was Richard Langridge, the other WODC councillor for North Witney, who has shown the personal integrity to represent the people who voted him in.

A final question. Why are senior Conservative Councillors being so blinkered in their determination to include the North Witney development in their plan when there are such huge issues of flooding, traffic, environment, infrastructure and viability?

NWAG, representing over 1,000 local signatories to our petition, are campaigning to have the North Witney development removed from the Local Plan despite WODC's efforts which appear to represent developers' needs rather than those of local people.

The following letter from NWAG was published in the Witney Gazette on the 26th October.

This afternoon (Wednesday), our WODC councillors will be asked to vote on continuing the Local Plan along a path which, unless they have the courage and wisdom to do otherwise, could lead to the destruction of the Witney we know and love.

When they vote on the Local Plan, our councillors need to remove the remote and flawed north Witney site which their officers now want increased from 1000 to 1400. All on ancient undulating farmland that is entirely in the parish of Hailey and part of the Wychwood Project.

Those Conservative councillors in the parish heartlands who believe this is nothing to with them need to think again. For when WODC’s local plan is rejected a second time because the officers persist on including north Witney, they will have opened the door to seeing rapacious developers sniffing greater profits from their lucrative parishes.

The cry of ‘we must have a plan in place’ must through reflection be replaced with ‘we must have a sound plan in place that will be approved at public examination.’

Consider these devastating facts

• The West End Link Road has to be built before North Witney is developed. It will not pass a sequential or essential test (the bridge would be in a Zone 3B flood plain and the development is not essential). The cost in 2012 was £18m and the developers’ own Flood Report says that the water levels would rise to up to 1.5 inches. Their Report calls that “negligible”!

• Both OCC and the the recent Burford Road appeal inspector agree that Shore’s Green is the second river crossing.

• Through four Freedom of Information requests OCC traffic counts show traffic flows increase in West End by 52.5%, in the Witney Conservation Area by 47.1% and Hailey Road becomes the third busiest road in Witney with traffic tripling in volume.

• All the water flowing down from the 100m contours has to move through the 0.75m Hailey Drain. To restrain this, they plan to build six reservoirs each the size of Wembley Stadium on land above the development. Does water run up hill? Nothing will be done to address existing flood risks.

• They are ignoring three WODC commissioned landscape reports 1998, 2007 and 2012 which all say categorically urbanisation between Hailey and Witney should be resisted.

Today is the day for WODC councillors to show leadership and take a step back from the brink and replace North Witney with a more suitable site.

Yours truly,

Stuart Harrison

North Witney Action Group

Despite public and private warnings of the issues above a majority of WODC councillors voted for the flawed Local Plan. We applaud those few councillors who had the integrity to vote against the plan. It will now proceed to public consultation.

We thought it would be a worthwhile reminder about just how bad the 2007 flooding in Witney was. The proposed North Witney development raises the prospect of worse flooding. To find out more read the flooding section on our website.