NWAG Comments: West Oxfordshire District Council (WODC) Planning Portal
22nd 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 - 3rd 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…’
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