Our parish councillors continue to work with neighbouring parishes to respond to proposals for North Witney housing development that would affect the whole neighbourhood. We are campaigning, as Witney Infrastructure Neighbourhood Group (WING), for the infrastructure that would be needed if planning permission is given for North Witney. In particular, Crawley would like to see the construction of the West End Link (WEL) that would encourage drivers to route through Witney rather than taking a cut-through route via Crawley to get over the river. The WEL could also provide an embankment that would retain flood water in the river valley and reduce the risk of flooding in Witney town centre. We have produced another report to explain how this would work and a copy is attached for your information. Please get back to me or any of the parish councillors if you have any questions.
Crawley PC has been following proposals to build up to 1400 new houses in North Witney with concerns about the impact that this may have on our village. We produced reports that we could submit to the planning department in WODC if a formal planning application was submitted for North Witney housing. Our reports were published on the Crawley Village website, and you may already have read them.
The North Witney housing area lies within Hailey Parish and has been designated as a Strategic Development Area (SDA) in the Local Plan. We therefore contacted Hailey PC to make them aware of the Crawley reports and consider if we could work with Hailey to generate a combined response from several local councils. This has led to the creation of a collaboration group with ten parishes being represented. We’ve adopted the name WING (Witney Infrastructure Neighbourhood Group).
With representatives from all ten parishes, WING has produced a ‘best fit’ position of what we want to happen if this housing development gets permission to proceed. We believe that a single submission from ten affected parishes will carry more weight than could be achieved by separate submissions from individual parishes.
WING has produced a report that sets out four main challenges. These are to ensure:
Construction of the West End Link (WEL)
Construction of Northern Distributor Road (NDR)
Flood Prevention Measures through the Windrush Valley
Community infrastructure as part of the North Witney housing scheme
All the supporting parishes (including Crawley) have been asked to consult with their residents to confirm opinions (hopefully positive ones) on the overall approach that WING has set out in their report. Crawley PC will make a resolution in September to send to the WING committee to confirm Crawley’s views.
Please make time to read the WING report and feedback your comments to any member of Crawley PC so that we can incorporate these in our formal response to WING. Thank you for your help.
