JUNCTION 9 on the M40 will not be redeveloped unless a controversial eco town is built, it was revealed last night.

Last week the Highways Agency announced it was making “interim” changes to a sliproad to cut the queues which stretch back on to the southbound carriageway.

Motorists and politicians have been complaining about the need for a redeveloped junction for five years but the Highways Agency has ruled that out unless an eco-town is built near Weston-on-the- Green or north-west of Bicester.

It comes as Cherwell District Council announced it was working with a developer on its plan for the north west option.

A Highways Agency spokesman said: “Any major improvement scheme from the Highways Agency at junction 9 of the M40 in Oxfordshire is dependent on a decision by the Department for Communities and Local Government to develop an eco-town locally.”

As part of the controversial Weston Otmoor proposal, developer Parkridge Holdings said it would upgrade junction nine. It is not yet known if P3Eco, the developer looking at the north west Bicester scheme, will make a similar offer.

District councillor Catherine Fulljames was unhappy with the agency’s stance.

She said: “It is amost a threat that we have to build houses to get these facilities.

“In the past the Highways Agency provided the funding.”

Oxfordshire County Council say it wants to see significant improvements to increase capacity at junction whether or not an eco town gets the green light.

Ian Hudspeth, the council's cabinet member for growth and infrastructure, said: “We want more work at this junction regardless of the eco-town proposal.

“This is a very busy junction without the eco-town and action needs to be taken.”

“The Highways Agency needs to pay far more sustained attention to this junction and other junctions on the M40 as well as the A34.

Mr Hudspeth said interim measures announced last week were welcome, but the work should be a start not a quick fix.

Driver Emma Mould, of Brackley, and travels to work in Wheatley using the M40, said the junction needed major improvements now.

She said: “Traffic often backs up or slows down several miles from junction nine and that is the sheer weight of traffic leaving there.

“I have seen drivers make emergency stops in the middle lane and then wait to be let into the queue on the slip road, which I feel is dangerous.”

Under the interim scheme, which will cost £650,000 with work starting in September, the hard-shoulder of the sliproad will be turned into a third lane for traffic to turn left to Bicester, with the two remaining lanes available for traffic going right on to the A34.

Meanwhile, P3Eco has started work on proposals to create a 5,000 home settlement on 852 acres of farmland between Bicester, Bucknell and Caversfield.

A spokesman for P3Eco, which was set up to fund and facilitate eco developments, said the Bicester site would be of “exceptional quality” and would “regenerate the town.

The spokesman said: “We are determined to create a development which will grow gradually as an organic extension to Bicester, which sits comfortably with and enhances the town and from which the whole community will benefit.”

The Government is due to release a short list of sites later this month.

bicester@oxfordmail.co.uk