A DEVELOPER is pursuing a Banbury plan for 300 homes, despite it being removed from a major housing strategy.

Miller Homes has submitted a planning application for 300 homes off Warwick Road, above North Oxfordshire Academy.

It comes after the site was removed from a Cherwell District Council strategy on where town homes should go in the next two decades.

In it, the council backs a nearby site for 400 homes north of Hanwell Fields, above Dukes Meadow Drive, close to recent housing.

Neighbours said they were shocked by the move and the owner of a neighbouring golf club warned it could put him out of business.

But a Miller Homes spokesman said: “We are very disappointed that this site has been removed from the new draft plan in favour of another site without any clear justification or evidence to support this decision.”

She said: “Our site, which is well integrated within the existing community, remains the best to meet the housing needs of the area.”

The developer put the “screening and scoping” application to seek views from the council over the plan, which could include a sports pitch.

The council included the land as a “reserve site” in its 2010 local plan, to be used if housing targets are not met. It is owned by Trinity College.

But it has now backed 400 homes north of Hanwell Fields, saying it is close to jobs, a secondary school and shops.

The latest strategy – the local plan – is being consulted on.

The council’s lead member for planning, Michael Gibbard, said: “The application will be judged against the requirements of the emerging local plan.”

Residents in Warkworth Close, immediately to the south of the Miller Homes site, said they were concerned by the proposal.

Peter Dee, 68, said: “It would decimate the value of the house. I would be boxed in.

“In the winter you can see as far as you want to see. We bought it because we have fields all around us.”

Andrew Taylor, 80, said: “It is stupid, utterly stupid. They are encroaching on valuable countryside, they are changing the green barrier, which is extremely important.

“Warwick Road is becoming dangerously busy already.”

Nick Turner, who runs Drayton Leisure Golf Course and a campsite next to the site, said he feared new homeowners would complain about floodlights and stray golf balls.

He said: “It could well put us out of business.”

Mr Turner, a district councillor, said: “There are plenty of cases where golf courses have struggled when there are houses built next to them.”

Other sites now backed by the council are 1,050 at Canalside, south of Banbury train station on the Oxford Canal; 800 at Hardwick Farm, north of the town by the M40; 400 west of Bretch Hill, to the south of Stratford Road; and 400 more at Bankside to the south of town, near Bodicote.

More than 1,000 homes have already been approved at Bankside, but have not been built.