In a letter dated Wednesday, June 11, the planning officer for the Vale of White Horse has recommended granting the full planning permission for Pye Homes to build 34 houses off Milton Road.
There is no appeal if this is approved by the planning committee!
Should this opportunistic and inappropriate application go ahead, then an even bigger step has been taken to destroy our lovely village and make it a suburb of Didcot.
The VOWH planning committee will consider approving the planning application at a meeting this Wednesday, June 19th, at 18.30 at:
Council Chambers
Abbey House
Abbey Close
Abingdon
OX14 3JE
We sincerely hope that you will join us in making our objections to this planning applications clear to the planning committee . KSCR will make a formal objection during the planning committee meeting.
We will be meeting “underneath the arches” by the Guild Hall in Abingdon from 18:00 this Wednesday 19th June to meet councilors as they arrive for the the Planning Committee meeting that will consider approving the application.
We really need and look forward to your support, this may be our last chance to stop it.
Thank you in advance.
Kind Regards
KSCR
The committee generally approached this application very carefully and realised they were being given some dubious statements by both the planning department and the developer.
“Pepper Potting” or even distribution of affordable homes was not suitable as they had only moved a block from one road to another and there was still little integration. We commented that this was convenient for the developer and SOHA but not what the council had actually asked for!
The KSCR funded “Traffic Report” had not been considered at all, and that surprised the committee, especially as this was a prerequisite. Planners just kept on saying that the previous data was sufficient to make a decision. When pressed as to why he had not received KSCR sponsored Capita Symonds report he just said that he hadn’t received it and neither had his colleague at OCC. The real reason is because of absolutely no response from planners, despite repeated emails. David Rothery used to be the planning officer, he is now off work on sick leave, since then no one has informed us who our new planning officer is; in fact they had not even replied to any of our emails until Monday 17th June! This reason was not even mentioned by planners and KSCR were being presented as unreasonable, but some councillors realised they were not getting the whole story. One comment from the audience was “why don’t you ever reply to our emails”!
Hydrology was an issue, as we all agree of course. One councillor has an MSC in Hydrology so is an expert, he asked about the depth of gravel over clay on the site as this could be a few inches or many feet, this makes a massive difference to drainage. He stated that the proposed 30cm of extra earth on this site is totally unsuitable. He commented on a site in Oxford that has 100com extra and they still have problems with drainage now.
The council have very wisely refused planning permission.
Warmest congratulations to the KSCR committee and everyone who has helped, you have worked tirelessly to defend our Rural Village with logical and professional arguments, very well done everyone!