Would expanding services available at Oxford Airport be good for us all?

YES

County council leader Ian Hudspeth

Oxfordshire’s economy is growing and is forecast to continue to grow.

We are a popular tourist and business destination, famous all over the world.

Why wouldn’t we in Oxfordshire want to have a high class airport to go with all of those existing advantages, cementing our place as a city and a county with a world class reputation?

An enhanced Oxford Airport could be a real boon for everyone. It would provide a useful business connection and services for the general public, who would appreciate not having to drive to one of the major London airports or Birmingham.

The current location of the airport is very well placed to serve an expanding Begbroke Science Park and the proposed Northern Gateway and it should not be forgotten that the Water Eaton railway station and park and-ride is nearby.

There would also be likely to be the potential for new jobs as a consequence of developments at the airport.

The county council’s local transport planning would no doubt seek to link the airport with other transport connections in the long-term.

I appreciate that people have legitimate concerns about intrusion in to the Green Belt. There’ll also be concerns about noise.

There are always are such concerns near to any airport.

As the county councillor who represents the Woodstock area at County Hall, as well as living in the area, I have more reason that most to take those concerns to heart.

Surely though all of those concerns can be addressed with the aim of achieving a good balance between a development that would add to our potential for economic growth and the concerns some local people may have.

My overwhelming response is that we need to grab hold of every economic advantage we can as a region.

The presence of a re-invigorated Oxford Airport would undoubtedly be just one such advantage.

The idea of links to multiple destinations in western Europe is a very appealing one.

I suspect a direct link to Oxford would also appeal to residents and business people resident in those destinations.

We live in a competitive world. I think we should respond by being competitive ourselves. The airport could be an inbuilt and permanent advantage for Oxfordshire looking forward.

NO

Peter Jay, Woodstock town councillor and chairman of the campaign group ROAR (Rural Oxfordshire Action Rally) 

ROAR opposes the proposed expansion of Kidlington airport, now absurdly, but also somewhat ominously, called London Oxford airport. We oppose it for reasons which are deeply rooted in ROAR’s raison d’être.

That is to fight for the Oxfordshire we love, beautiful, green, a human-scale community with affordable homes for our citizens and suitable services and infrastructure to support this way of life.

We [Rural Oxfordshire Action Rally] have come into being since the autumn as an informal gathering of citizens and action groups across Oxfordshire, appalled at the breakdown of the Government’s National Planning Policy Framework.

This has, however unintentionally, created open season for opportunist developers to drive coach, horses and whole circuses of "quick buck" schemes through normal planning controls.

Some inevitably believe that this was indeed exactly the intention, channelling mouth-watering gains into the pockets of the developers whose contributions play such a fat part in lining party coffers.

This rash of development schemes owes nothing to ascertained housing needs and everything to landowners’ belief that a brief window has opened through which, if they move fast enough, they can slip schemes that would normally stand no chance of approval.

District councils without a Local Plan or with supposedly deficient housing supply are held up to ransom by the threat that inspectors will be obliged in these grounds to overrule any refusal of planning consent.

It has proved all too easy for developers to obstruct by dilatory tactics.

The adoption of Local Plans in some areas and to manipulate the housing supply numbers, which anyway appear to have no firm foundation in fact.

Airport expansion is, of course, distinct from wholesale building development, but poses some similar threats to our environment and to the character of our communities.

More airport movements are the last thing this part of the country needs.

And the idea, canvassed by some confiding souls, that airport expansion will block commercial building development on the airport itself gives no weight to the airport’s location in the Oxford green belt.

It is polluting, environmentally destructive and unsustainable; and the expansion of the rail network makes it unnecessary. T The green belt between Woodstock and Kidlington would be fatally jeopardised.

We have, moreover none of the social capital – road network, hospitals, affordable housing, amenities – needed to support such grandiose plans.

Nor do we have either the space or the prospective funding to build that social capital, not anyway according to the fiscal dogmas of the coalition government.

And, as the Plowden report explained 54 years ago, this kind of stop-go, off-again, on-again public investment is the most inefficient possible way of organising infrastructure investment.

The county council – and if they have blessed the airport expansion plans, the Treasury - should think again.