A SLIGHTLY obscure planning document from Cherwell District Council (known as the Strategic Housing Land Availability Assessment) allocates two sites on the edge of Kidlington as being potentially suitable for housing development.

These are a fairly large sites behind The Moors and a smaller one behind Webbs Way.

Currently these sites enjoy Green Belt protection. However, with a review of the Oxford Green Belt highly likely in the near future, it is hard not to wonder whether Cherwell District Council is planning, as part of that review, to offer up these sites for development.

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Twice I have attempted to alert local residents to this risk. But I have been subjected to pressure from local Liberal Democrats to tone down my remarks so as not to cause residents to become concerned about the situation. In my view, residents have good reason to be concerned.

Yet now I have received a leaflet from Liberal Democrat parliamentary candidate Layla Moran expressing her concern at plans to build housing estates on the Green Belt.

If Ms Moran is really as concerned about the issue as she would have us believe, a good place to start might be to shake her party colleagues in Kidlington out of their complacency and encourage them to put up a more spirited resistance to the District Council’s plans for these sites.

Cllr Chris Robins
Kidlington Parish Council


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