Planning - The Objectors' View

In last month’s Bridge [November] , I wrote about the HELAA plan which proposes to build 70 dwellings on AONB land. Consultation started on 3 November and will end on 22 December.  We hope you will support us in stopping this project by registering your objections at www.westoxon.gov.uk/localplan2043 

It is doubtful whether the planners understand the concept of Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. In the WODC plan, they wrote:

Situated to the west of the town, the preferred spatial option would be located in the Cotswolds National Landscape [formerly AONB] but due to the slope of the land, would be well contained within the local landscape.

The ‘due to the slope of the land, [the site] would be well contained within the local landscape’ means that the site will not be seen from the A40. The Outstanding Natural Beauty is not a view. It is an area which not only encompasses fields, slopes, or wooded areas, but also villages and historical settlements. As Cotswolds National Landscape highlights:

This desire for new houses has already compromised the internal and external form of many settlements […]. Erosion of the special character of the edges of settlements is a particular problem, as towns and villages have become ‘suburbanised’ by development that is entirely inappropriate in its density …and formal relationship with the surrounding landscape.

With no separation between the surgery and the new housing development, the edge of Burford would see a 40% spread West.

Building on lands within the Cotswolds National Landscape is highly regulated and ‘planning permission should be refused for major developments except in exceptional circumstances and where it can be demonstrated to be in the public interest (paragraph 177 of the NPPF).’

Cotswold Gate has already increased Burford’s population by 25% in the last four years. With 70 more dwellings, the overall increase would reach 34%. This is not a ‘proportionate level of housing development’. This new site should be considered a major development and WODC must provide evidence that there is an exceptional need to do so, and such need cannot be that more houses are needed in West Oxfordshire as a whole.

As of today, there are 55 properties in Burford listed as Airbnb and 24 homes for sale. Five previously affordable houses are now for sale for £325-£435k and eight of the homes for sale are at Cotswold Gate. Have planners proved that the new site of 70 dwellings is ‘meeting an identified local housing need’ and if they have, where is their evidence? Let us stop greedy landowners and property developers dictating how many new houses Burford needs and how much land should be concreted over.

In the 2,000 pages of supporting evidence provided by WODC, there is extraordinarily little mentions Burford. The planners have failed to show that there is an exceptional reason to build on lands part of the Cotswolds AONB, and we hope you will support us in stopping this ludicrous project by registering your objections.

For people needing help in accessing the WODC website, we offer a drop-in service at the Warwick Hall on Mondays and Thursdays from 3 to 4pm.

C. Hoge

(Join us, visit www.SaveBurford.com)