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Vale of White Horse District Council
Abbey House, Abbey Close,
Abingdon, OX14 3JE
Email: comments@whitehorsedc.gov.uk
Telephone: 01235 520202

Core Strategy: Additional Consultation

In January 2009 we published our Core Strategy Preferred Options for consultation. As a result of your comments we have done further work and carried out further consultation on some additional matters before finalising the draft core strategy. A summary of comments received during this consultation can be downloaded from the right of the page.

The main changes to the proposals cover the following topics:

Land for new homes and affordable homes
The Government has said we need to identify more land to make sure 11,560 homes are built in the Vale in the period to 2026. For this reason we are considering identifying land for 12,715 homes. This is 10 per cent more than we need and will give land for a further two years.

Existing major sites identified:

  • A site for 2,500 homes west of Grove on the former airfield
  • A new site for 2,150 homes west of Didcot (in addition to existing housing commitment at Great Western Park)

Other sites include:

  • A site for 1,500 homes north east of Wantage with a new relief road
  • A new site for about 400 homes in the northern part of the Harwell Science and Innovation Campus

The Council will not take forward ideas for a major development south west of Abingdon because no feasible solution to the serious transport problems in the town has been identified.

We are considering a new policy to secure 40 per cent affordable homes on all sites for three or more properties.

Town centre shops

We consulted you about the following ideas.

Abbey Shopping Centre and Charter Area in Abingdon:

  • Refurbish the existing centre
  • Rebuild the Cargo and Somerfield stores for shops on the ground floor with a new library and health centre above
  • Redevelop the Charter area (including the multi storey car park) for a major new store with car parking above.

Improving shopping in Faringdon (leaflet available to download from the right of the page)

  • Extend Budgens supermarket in the town centre or
  • Identify a site for a new supermarket.  
     

If Faringdon is to have a new supermarket it will have to be out of the town centre. We prefer a site north west of Gloucester Street car park rather than an alternative east of Park Road as it is closer to the town centre.

Transport

Oxfordshire County Council has prepared the Southern Central Oxfordshire Transport Strategy (SCOTS). It shows major new roads are needed in the Vale west of Didcot and north east of Wantage. Since we consulted you last January the County Council has decided the new road south of the A417 should be west of the A34 (not east as previously shown).

We will safeguard land for these roads and seek contributions from developers towards construction.

The county council says at the moment there is no transport justification for the following major road schemes, so they will not be safeguarded in the core strategy

  • The Abingdon southern bypass
  • The Wantage western relief road
  • The reopening of the A34 slip roads at Drayton

New Policies

Since last January we have decided we need two new policies about gypsies and travellers and the reservoir.   
  
Gypsies and travellers
A partial review of the South East Plan* is proposing that a site for 12 pitches should be provided in the Vale by 2016.
Policies will favour sites which are next to or near the towns and larger villages and which will safeguard local amenities and the landscape.  A new site may be allowed in the Green Belt if there are no suitable sites elsewhere.


Reservoir
Thames Water is promoting a new reservoir in the Vale between Steventon and East Hanney. The South East Plan* requires us to allocate and safeguard land in case the need for the reservoir is established.
Our policy will safeguard land in case a reservoir is needed in the Vale and include measures to guide how it can be developed to make it acceptable.


For full details of all these proposals please see the report that went to the council's executive on 9 December 2009.   

The proposals are not only based on comments received at the preferred options stage, but also on a number of background papers. These include:

The additional consultation stage for the Core Strategy has now finished. The comments received during this period, a summary of which can be downloaded from the right of the page, will help us to finalise the draft core strategy. Further details are available on our Core Strategy page.

* Note: The South East Plan has now been revoked. For further details please visit our Regional Planning page.

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