A CONTROVERSIAL link road which could be built in Witney dominated the town’s annual meeting.

Residents continued to vent their frustrations about Oxfordshire County Council’s plan to build the £19.5mCogges Link Road.

The road, which has avoided Government spending cuts, aims to reduce pollution and congestion in Bridge Street and will run from Oxford Hill, around the Cogges estate, to the Station Lane roundabout by Sainsbury’s.

On Wednesday night, campaigners traded blows with Witney Town councillors at Langdale Hall, Market Square.

Cogges resident Wyn Devonald received app-lause from the 30 in attendance after asking why the council had not backed an application to protect Witney meadows, south of the town by the River Windrush, from the road.

The 2009 application would have granted the meadows, through which the planned road will pass, coveted Town Green status, protecting it from development.

But the application failed after an independent inspector decided the land was not public.

Mr Devonald said: “Why did you not support that, as the owners of that land?

“It would have protected that land, and protected it for ever and a day.”

Town clerk Sharon Groth said the application had been looked at but the council felt it would have cost too much to maintain the green.

David Condon, chairman of the Witney branch of the Campaign to Protect Rural England, questioned the council’s support of the road given that it will be built on a floodplain.

The Environment Agency recently published a new flood map for Witney which put more homes in the at risk category.

Councillor David Harvey, the West Oxfordshire District Council cabinet member for environment, said the road “has been designed by specification, agreed by the experts – the Environment Agency themselves”.

The 2007 floods in Witney had been a “very large wake up call” for the district council, he said.

The councillors also received questions on the potential sale of West Witney Sports Ground in Burford Road, to fund new facilities in Downs Road.

It also wants to sell and Langdale Hall, which in 2009/10 made a loss of £61,916.

The whole town council is up for re-election in May.