Plans for 40 homes, a care home and a nursery in Abingdon

HDD Abingdon has applied to develop 2.08 hectares of land north of Copenhagen Drive in a hybrid application.

A planning application has been sought for outline permission for the homes, open space, associated car parking and landscaping, while full permission has been sought for the two-storey day nursery and three storey, 75-unit care home.

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The application submitted to Vale of White Horse District Council is now at the consultation stage.

Residents have objected to the application for a number of different reasons.

Rev Frances Blood said: "Both the proposed nursery and the care home are immediately adjacent to the A34. The nursery has an outdoor play area and the care home a garden.

"Whatever baffle boards are placed along the A34, considerable air pollution will be experienced in both play area and garden from the constant A34 traffic.

"Given the housebuilding already in progress in north Abingdon it seems totally unnecessary to allow development of 40 houses, together with a care home and nursery on this small, restricted and unfavourable site. We recommend planning permission be refused."

Jan Edwards called for the application to be refused or deferred for two years.

She said: "Abingdon is currently experiencing the negative effect of significant rainfall in the area, including localised flooding in areas and properties not previously prone to flooding.

"It appears the existing waterways and Thames Water infrastructure are already unable to cope with the impact of the new housing developments at Kings Gate, Abbey Fields and Radley Reach and well over 50 per cent has yet to be built/occupied."

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And Roland Sparling said: "I feel this application should be refused as there is no safe position for an access road to the proposed site."

County councillor for Abingdon North Nathan Ley said the application left "a lot of unanswered questions particularly around highways and drainage."

He added: "Ever since the previous Conservative administration signed off on all the new houses in Abingdon this issue has consistently given me the most headaches, and our experience thus far with the developments hasn't been entirely positive.

"Recent flooding events across the wider sites also brings into question whether we can trust Thames Water to have sufficient infrastructure capacity, and that the Environment Agency will do it's job properly to enforce any licences.

"This should definitely be a reason to pause at least until reassurance can be given regarding the existing developments under way."

Aldi off Wootton Road is the nearest supermarket to the site. Its consultation response is not yet shown on the planning application documents.

A major housebuilding programme has been ongoing in the town in recent years, including 900 homes on land north of Dunmore Road and Twelve Acre Drive.

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About the author 

Andy is the Trade and Tourism reporter for the Oxford Mail and you can sign up to his newsletters for free here. 

He joined the team more than 20 years ago and he covers community news across Oxfordshire.

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