A RENEWED bid to advance the scheme to extend Oxford south of Blackbird Leys will be put to a planning inspector next week.

Plans to build 4,000 homes near Grenoble Road on Green Belt land are being legally challenged.

But the public examination into Oxford City Council’s planning strategy, which details plans for the homes near Grenoble Road and a business park in North Oxford, has been suspended following a successful legal challenge centred on building on the Green Belt.

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

The council will argue that the public inquiry into its plans should not be put on hold indefinitely.

A huge 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. The inspector says he is now keen to see whether there could be “a positive way” to enable scrutiny of the council’s long-term development plans, while the legal challenges proceed.

He will ask city council officers for their views.

The outcome of the meeting is also likely to have important implications on the proposal for 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 council will argue that the legal challenge applies to the planning blueprint for the whole region, the South East Plan, which includes the proposal to extend Oxford south of Grenoble Road.

But it said the legal challenges should have “only limited implications” for the city’s Core Strategy and that public examination should resume.

Colin Cook, the council’s board member for city development, added: “Hopefully, we can move this on and get some clarity and certainty as regards the way forward.

“It has all become quite complicated, with the Government accepting that there is a need for a full review of the Green Belt before houses can be built on it.”

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