Leader's blog: standing firm on Weston Otmoor plans
Published on: 14 Apr 2008
My thoughts on the need for vast and prompt investment in infrastructure such as roads, schools and amenities before any so-called 'eco-town' could be built at Weston-on-the-Green have been widely reported.
However, in a way, this is old news. The county council has been consistent in its line about proposals for vast numbers of new housing from the very start.
It may not be the most sophisticated or complicated line to take on the issue - but it is certainly simple common sense. If you build thousands of new homes, you need the roads capacity, the schools and the other facilities to match that. Yet this inescapable truth somehow seems to elude government.
My strong feeling is that there is a superficiality about the infrastructure element of what is proposed. We are very unsure about the financial proposals and have the strong impression that we will be presented with a 'housing first, infrastructure lagging behind' scenario. In other words the first residents in the eco-town would have very little on their doorsteps other than more homes.
We need infrastructure and homes at one and the same time and right amount of money to pay for it, and that applies to all of the proposals for new homes, not just Weston-on-the Green. The fact that we have to keep reminding people of this is indicative of a seriously inability to link policy to the realities of day-to-day life.
There are other issues that seem to have been paid scant attention. Will the eco-town be environmentally friendly? Will people stop using their cars? Will people use the eco-town as a dormitory to commute on the improved railway network to Oxford, London, Birmingham, Milton Keynes?
What about neighbouring Bicester. It could potentially be left in the shadows by this shiny new development. Bicester already needs a better town centre and big infrastructure improvements to cope with new homes planned there - and we were calling for that before this Weston on the Green proposal hit the news.
All in all there is a lot that needs to be thought through about this whole business and I am not convinced the planning is all that it should be.
