RESIDENTS campaigning against more than 500 homes being built at Winterbrook in Wallingford are to have their say after it was agreed to reopen a public hearing.

South Oxfordshire District Council had originally chosen Slade End Farm, off Wantage Road, as the site for the 555 homes, as part of its core strategy for where 10,000 homes should be built across the district over the next 16 years.

But planning inspector Roy Foster said the homes should be built at Winterbrook, south of the town, near Reading Road.

Residents living in the Brookmead Drive area, where a new footpath to the Winterbrook estate would be built, did not have the chance to address the inquiry before it closed last year.

Now, after Wallingford Town Council lobbied on their behalf, they are being given that chance on two days in May.

Father-of-two Neil Kelly, 74, of Winterbrook Lane, said: “Information about where the access road is going to be built was sprung at the last minute by Berkeley Homes and residents did not have the chance to respond.

“It would have been completely iniquitous if the planning inspector had not allowed residents the opportunity to say what they think. ”

Former mayor Bernard Stone said: “Berkeley Homes only announced their plans for the access road on the penultimate day of the public hearing.

“They said they had come to an arrangement to acquire property to form a bridge link over Bradford’s Brook.”

Cholsey Parish Council chairman Mark Gray said residents in Brookmead Drive were concerned that the footbridge link to the new estate would bring extra traffic because St John’s Primary School would move to the site.

Town clerk Andrew Rogers said: “We wrote to the inspector, via SODC, urging him to reopen the hearing.”

SODC spokesman Gavin Walton said: “The inspector has decided that further hearings will be held on May 22 and May 23 to discuss matters raised in this latest round of consultation.

“The inspector will decide the issues these hearings will cover and who will be invited to contribute.”