A £296 million transport network to unlock almost 12,000 new homes in and around Didcot remains on the table despite conflicting views among leading councillors.

The Didcot Garden Town housing infrastructure programme, known as HIF1, is the combination of four projects to ensure there is capacity to connect a wave of new houses set to be built to the south of Oxford.

They entail creating a dual carriageway on the A4130 east of Milton Interchange, a new road bridge over the A4130, railway line and Milton Road, a river crossing linking Didcot to Culham and a bypass for Clifton Hampden. All are proposed to feature segregated walking and cycling facilities.

The project has been in the offing since 2019 when Oxfordshire County Council, the authority in charge, was run by a Conservative-led cabinet.

The coalition of Liberal Democrat, Labour and Green councillors now in power agree that the plan as it stood was too car focused but differ on how to move forward.  

Opponents say building a road network does not marry up with the environmental ambitions of the county and that options such as light rail or guided buses, public transport that runs on dedicated tracks, could do the job. 

A report by council officers warned that not going ahead would risk the delivery of 11,700 homes across 12 sites, more than 4,000 of which are set to be affordable homes.

The cabinet tentatively decided to support progressing – and borrowing up to £30 million to make up the financial shortfall from the original project – subject to negotiations with Homes England, the body providing more than £230 million of the funds required. 

Those talks will primarily centre on timescales that could affect grant funding and design changes to shift the focus from car use to public and active travel options.

Labour councillor Duncan Enright, who represents Witney North & East, the county’s cabinet member for travel & development strategy, said: “An awful lot rides on this.

“There is an existing crisis of congestion and pollution in that area, decades of neglect means the infrastructure around Didcot is woefully inadequate for a rapidly growing town and blights the villages that surround it.

“We have thousands of homes being built and employment growth in the area but that ignores the existing need to bring into the 21st century something that was built in the 19th. 

“We also have a power station site which is being opened up to commerce but it will not be without this scheme, we have cutting edge science which will have investment halted unless we make an attempt to address these issues.

“We have a climate emergency and that demands that we cannot accept the inherited HIF1 scheme and I am pleased to say we have already made strides to address that both in the construction and the use of that route.

“It is going to take all of us to do this but as I have said previously, the biggest risk is us. We have to make a decision that this is going to be a great scheme that encourages modal shift, provides a new platform for public transport and extra kilometres of active travel network which will open up that whole area to cycling and walking.

“They are not open at the moment. It is not clean at the moment, it is congested. What we can build is something that will be an example for others to follow and for us to be proud of.”