Villagers and local councillors are fighting to reverse plans to put 1,400 homes on farmland.

They have been spurred into action by Cherwell district councillors have earmarked land between Bicester and Chesterton to take the bulk of the houses needed in the town up to 2011, rather than the old RAF Bicester airfield. Now that the Bicester Local Plan is going into another consultation period between this week and March 23, objectors to the farmland plan - known as the south-west option - are marshalling their arguments.

Town and district councillor Norman Bolster said his colleagues in Bicester were likely to repeat their view that the homes should go on the airfield, a brownfield site.

"We are still thinking about what we will do.

"But it is reasonably accurate to say we will be consistent with what we have said before in preferring the airfield," said Mr Bolster, the leader of Bicester Town Council.

Chesterton Parish Council chairman David Chapman, said residents would reiterate everything they had said before that the airfield was the best site.

Mr Chapman added: "The majority of objectors in the first local plan consultation period thought the airfield should take the housing, yet Cherwell planning officers seem to have an agenda favouring the south-west option."

The district council believes 300 homes should be built at RAF Bicester anyway, and Mr Chapman believes this is incompatible with its plan to create a conservation area at the former station.

The whole planning process which looks into the direction of future housing growth for Bicester is going to be looked at by a new but an as-yet-unnamed residents' group in Chesterton.

Its chairman, Adrian Vickers, said: "This is not just NIMBY-ism. We are interested in all aspects of the planning process. We feel the situation has become polarised between the options. But we do believe the south-west option is not necessarily the most appropriate for Bicester."