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Search the Public Notice PortalA developer is urging for plans for 340 homes in a town near Oxford to be reconsidered after they were refused by the district council.
The homes were planned for the green space immediately north of The Moors in Kidlington, which is the last area outside the town which is not earmarked for development.
Cherwell District Council’s planning committee voted to refuse the application in January against the recommendations of its own planning officers.
The developer HarperCrewe Bloombridge Ltd has submitted a letter to the planning portal asking the council to reconsider the plans at its meeting next on Thursday, March 19.
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The developer also made some changes to its application, including removing the cricket pavilion from the development and reducing the height of the buildings near St Mary’s Church so they will not block the views of the church.
The Land Behind the Moors campaign group, which is opposed to the plans, is encouraging people to attend the planning meeting next week.
Dr Lisa Smith, who co-runs the campaign group said: “This is not procedure as we understand it.
“The changes are not material considerations – if there were, there should be a new application.
“I feel that the reasons it was turned down were perfectly reasonable and are defendable going forward.
“The green belt argument is critical to that.
“If I was in [the councillors] position I would be very concerned that my decision-making process was being challenged in this way.
“I don’t think we are able to stop it going back to the committee.
“All we can do is prepare for that eventuality and hope that members hold firm to their previous conviction that the application be refused.”
Professor Daphne Hampson, who also runs the campaign, said: “It must be nonsensical for that land to have been specifically left off the list of developable land on the Local Plan 2024 and then when a developer comes along immediately to go back on that.
“It was left off for good reason.
“This land is to us what Port Meadow is to Oxford.
“It has been open countryside with the fine views of the church for a thousand years and is our duty to protect it for future generations.”
She added that “the peace, tranquillity and beauty of the place could only suffer” from the number of people living there, and that it would be “fatal” for wildlife.
Cherwell District Council would not confirm whether the application will be discussed at next Thursday’s planning meeting.
The agenda for that meeting will be made public this Thursday (March 12).
The applicant said the planning committee “were put under significant pressure by an active group of objectors”, and it believed that had “distorted” their impression of the plans.
But Dr Smith said she “utterly refutes” this claim.
“They had a long consultation process. The public only had five minutes in the meeting to put our side of the story," she said.
Prior to the planning decision, council officers argued the site was classed as ‘grey belt’ rather than green belt and therefore did not require “very special circumstances” to be approved.
But this was called into question by objectors who argued the land was green belt.
More than 480 objections were submitted to the council’s planning portal, raising concerns about flooding, biodiversity and the impact on the historic St Mary’s Church.
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