Countryside protection group says 'Hands Off' Green Belt -
OXFORDSHIRE's branch of CPRE (Campaign to Protect Rural England) has launched a hard hitting “Hands Off Oxford’s Green Belt” campaign to combat what it sees as serious threats.
In a recent press release, the group said: "Whilst the public strongly supports the Green Belt – a national MORI Poll in 2005 found that 84% believed that it should always remain open and undeveloped, 61% very strongly so – it has never been under such threat as it is today."
The CPRE sees serious threats to the Green Belt ringing all round Oxford City, including the so-called ‘eco-town’ proposal at Weston Otmoor, threats at Marston, Shipton, and Kennington, and the City Council’s plan for an urban extension onto South Oxfordshire’s Green Belt south of Grenoble Road.
Dr Helena Whall, CPRE Oxfordshire Campaign Manager, said: "One of the greatest threats to Oxford’s Green Belt is the City Council’s proposal to build a large urban extension of new business premises and at least 4,000 houses south of the City. Its case for the urban extension has always been that it was to provide much needed housing for the City – despite the fact they accepted at a Public Inquiry that it could all be built within the City itself. In any case the plan is not to just build houses but to create a ‘mixed development’ which the Secretary of State has recognised risks making the housing situation worse not better."
Helena Whall continued: "For some years CPRE has been saying that the City’s urge to sprawl out over the Green Belt (which was specifically set up for the purpose of containing it) is nothing to do with housing need but simple expansionism – a wish to be Greater Oxford, a new Birmingham.
"Evidence recently obtained by the CPRE of the City’s expansionist tendency from as long ago as 1981 confirms this view. The City’s ‘war-map’ shows them taking over a long list of surrounding parishes including Kennington to the North and the present so-called urban extension area in the South. Their 1981 plan – which was claimed to be solely for the good of its victims – was widely derided by local papers at the time. It simply went underground. Ten years later the City took over Marston and Littlemore. The Grenoble Road extension would be another domino. How long until Kidlington is again in the firing line?"
The CPRE also reports that it finds "alarming" news that South Oxfordshire District Council, which CPRE says has up until now professed itself a strong supporter of the Green Belt when opposing Oxford’s urban extension, is now, in its just published, Core Strategy, proposing two Green Belt "violations" of its own, at Berinsfield and at Wheatley.
Over the next few weeks, CPRE members and Oxfordshire’s Green Belt parishes will receive a ‘Hands Off Oxford’s Green Belt’ campaign pack including a newsletter, car-stickers and leaflets.
On Sunday, April 19, members of the public who are concerned about threats to the Green Belt are being invited to join a campaign walk from Shotover to Horspath, along part of CPRE’s Oxfordshire Green Belt Way, led by popular TV personality, Wesley Smith, followed by a rally at Horspath Village Hall with a panel of speakers including local M.P. John Howell, Ian Scargill, Chairman of the Oxford Green Belt Network, and Elizabeth Gillespie, District Councillor for Garsington and The Baldons.
Photo: By Christian Guthier, Wheatfields.net
