Vale Consultation ~ January 2010
More houses and roads in Harwell Parish
You may remember that at the beginning of this year, 2009, our District Council (the Vale of White Horse) published their planning document for the period to 2026, which included proposals for a large number of additional houses west of Didcot, and a Harwell Link road running from the west of Didcot to the A417. This planning document is called the “Core Strategy”, and was due for publication as a formal draft document in January 2010. Thereafter it goes to the Secretary of State and a public hearing before final adoption in 2011.
The Vale has been considering all the feedback from the consultation period, and has probably been under pressure from the government to maintain a supply of new houses, especially because of the recession and the delay to Great Western Park, so now they want to make some changes to the proposed Core Strategy. Details of these changes have just been released and are going to the Vale Executive on 4th December. Assuming that they are approved for consultation, the two main points that will affect Harwell Parish are:
- A Harwell Field Link Road which extends the Harwell Strategic Link south, along western edge of the A34, directly to the Harwell Campus. This was the preferred option proposed by the Harwell and Chilton Parish Councils in their response to the plans, and helps to avoid an excess of traffic on the A417 Reading Road through the Village.
- Addition of plans for a major new housing site of 400 houses at northern part of Harwell Science and Innovation Campus, also known as Harwell North Drive.
The map shows these, and, of course, still highlights the major expansion west of Didcot.
The Vale are also agreeing to prepare a Joint Action Plan with South Oxfordshire (SODC) for Didcot extending west to the A34. This might help address some of the difficulties of planning for the major expansion of the town that crosses the boundaries of the two districts.
You can find out more by looking at the documents on the Vale website. These are sometimes hard to find, so we will publish links to them from the planning pages of the Parish Council website. [See links in the panel on the left]. The Vale may also produce a leaflet about the changes, which we will help to make available as widely as possible.
Plus, the Vale will be holding a consultation event in the Freeman Hall (back of the village hall) on Thursday 7th January between 3:30 and 7:30pm where you will be able to come and have a look at the plans and ask any questions you may have.
These proposals are open for consultation until the 29th January 2010, so please make your views known to the Vale and to the Parish Council.
If we accept that new houses are needed somewhere, at first sight the proposal for houses at Harwell North Drive makes some sense. The transport infrastructure is already there, and will be improved with the Harwell Field Link road. There are shops and other support services already in place. Although the site has many mature trees, it’s not open countryside that’s never been built on. However the proposals will undoubtedly be of great concern to the people living there at the moment. In formulating its own response the Parish Council will welcome as much feedback as possible.
David Marsh
Chairman, Harwell Parish Council
30 November 2009
This piece was in the December 2009 Harwell News
Comments
- Harwell by-pass
Add A CommentNorman Staples - Thu, 31 Dec 2009 08:34:39 -0600
I take it as read that the community needs to make provision for jobs and houses, and our share of those provsions has already been determined "from above". Our local input and influence on those matters is only on "where?" - not "how?", "why?" or "when?".
But on road infra-structure there is great suspicion that the proposed sections of new roads to by-pass Harwell will not be built until well after the effects of the growth of traffic through the village resulting from the jobs and housing developments have been endured - if ever.
Even before the present financial crisis, the failure to fund a bypass for Marcham after 70 years of trying is just one piece of evidence of the difficulty in getting such investment. It is said that the Authorities "will seek contributions to funding" from developers - but such funds will normally be scheduled AFTER various stages of house building are complete, and are small compared with the full funding required.
Our efforts need to be put behind getting the funds committed to START & COMPLETE the roadworks before the next tranche of housing is started. We have already lost this battle in respect of GWP.
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