Posts by Nemone Caldwell

The Preferred Options consultation on the Oxford Local Plan 2040 is now live and closes Monday 14 November. CPRE Oxfordshire believes this consultation is not fit for purpose.  A Local Plan’s fundamental objective is to set out the quantity and spatial distribution of proposed development – this Preferred Options consultation is completely opaque on both.…

Image credit: West Oxfordshire District Council Consultation on Proposed Main Modifications to the Submission Draft Salt CrossGarden Village Area Action Plan (AAP) is now open, closing 4th November 2022. In August Planning Inspectors ruled the Plan’s proposed policy on Net Zero Carbon Development ‘unsound’. Read more here: Salt Cross Net Zero Ambition Crushed Comments can…

Last night (Wednesday 21st Sept) South Oxfordshire District Council Planning Committee voted unanimously against a five-year extension of the Nuneham Courtney solar farm, a development which they had permitted last December. This time Committee found that this 139-hectare solar farm, on a hillside in the Green Belt overlooking the City, would be harmful to the…

‘Your Voice Counts’ Consultation Following a recent change in political administration, the District Council is updating both its Local Plan and Council Plan. Consultation is now live and due to close on 5th October. The Council is seeking the views of local residents, organisations and businesses on the areas they should focus on within these…

The end of an era: a message from our Chief Executive We at CPRE, the countryside charity, are deeply saddened to learn of the death of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II. We were honoured to have her as our patron throughout her long reign and today marks the end of an era for us all. …

Image Credit: Ben Seymour, Unsplash CPRE Oxfordshire is asking Councillors to look at regional planning again, starting from first principles. The OxCam Arc may not quite yet be dead, but we should take this opportunity to see where it all went wrong. The top down imposition of projects and ambitions was never going to sit…

Plans for an Abingdon Reservoir have been around for more than 20 years, and Thames Water remain focused on a 12km mega-reservoir project, built on farmland between 3 nearby villages with a 25-metre-high bund wall. The reservoir will hold 150 billion litres of water intended to supply London and the Affinity Water regions of the…

The cancellation of the Oxfordshire Plan is a very disappointing outcome. Only last week we were promised a further consultation, particularly addressing housing numbers. It would clearly be better to plan for the whole of Oxfordshire than for each of the five District Councils to make individual plans. As we understand it, the cancellation of…

Image credit: Grosvenor oxongv.co.uk Salt Cross is a new ‘garden village’ being built at Eynsham in West Oxfordshire. Having fought against the development, the local community has subsequently worked extremely hard to try to ensure it is an exemplar of good development – including net zero commitments. West Oxfordshire District Council, supported by strong public views,…

Image credit: Abigail Oliver New CPRE research has found there’s been an amazing hundred-fold increase in our best farmland lost to development in little more than a decade. As a result, we’re telling government we need a land strategy and new planning rules to safeguard our food security. Newly published research on food security has found…