A RENEWED bid to move forward the scheme to extend Oxford south of Grenoble Road will be put to a planning inspector next week.

Plans to build thousands of homes near Grenoble Road on Green Belt land are being legally challenged, but Oxford City Council will argue that the public inquiry into its development plans should not be put on hold in the meantime.

The public examination into the city’s planning strategy, including plans to build a business park in North Oxford, has been suspended following a number of successful legal challenges centred on building on Oxford’s Green Belt.

With the council’s whole planning strategy in a state of limbo for months, planning inspector Stephen Pratt has called a meeting in Oxford Town Hall on Monday to assess whether the inquiry into the council’s Oxford Core Stragey should be resumed.

A question mark has surrounded the city council’s Green Belt policy since September, when the Government announced that it would not be contesting six legal challenges to planning proposals for Oxford contained in the regional assembly’s South East Plan.

The inspector says he is now keen to see whether there could be “a positive way” to advance the examination of the council’s long-term development plans at the same time as the legal challenges are taking place.

The inspector will ask city council officers for their views.

And the outcome of the meeting is also likely to have important implications for the proposal to build the so-called Northern Gateway in North Oxford and Wolvercote, which would involve building a business park on 100 acres of land near the Pear Tree roundabout.

The city council will argue that the six legal challenges apply to the the South East Plan, the planning blueprint for the region, which includes the proposal to extend Oxford on to green land south of Grenoble Road.

A city council spokesman said the legal challenges should have “only limited implications” for the city’s own Oxford Core Strategy and that public examination should be resumed.

The public examination into the strategy had been due to be published in November.

Meanwhile, the city council has come under fire this week from residents who say the views of ordinary people on the core strategy had so far been ignored by the council, and that there had been inadequate consultation. Residents’ groups agreed to form a new alliance at a public meeting on Tuesday night in the Town Hall.

One resident, Rosemary Harris, said: “By working together we hope to have a better input in shaping the city’s future. We need to work together to balance the powerful interests of business, the NHS, and the universities in order to achieve a better and more balanced city for everyone.”