Report

Windrush Infrastructure Neighbourhood Group (WING)

WING was established to coordinate the responses of local parishes around Witney to the proposals and options for housing development in the North Witney Strategic Development Area (SDA). WING has representatives from parishes (shaded green on the map) that are mostly, but not wholly, on the north of the Windrush and are badly affected by limited access into Witney over the single river crossing in Bridge Street.

The Local Plan 2031 includes 1400 houses in the North Witney SDA. The area already suffers from congestion and air pollution, and the Local Plan recognises that this would be made worse by the increase in population and traffic arising from North Witney housing. It requires that infrastructure improvements must be built and that these are to be funded by the SDA developer.

If North Witney housing goes ahead, WING believes it is vital that the associated infrastructure improvements are well thought out and fully delivered. We will contribute to decision making to make sure this happens. It is important that the best use is made of available funding to improve local infrastructure.

At the time of writing, an outline planning application has been submitted by North Witney Land Consortium for a residential-led mixed-use development in North Witney SDA (WODC Planning reference 24/00482/OUT). WING has already submitted an outline objection to this that lists our challenges to the application in broad terms and gives an undertaking to provide a report explaining our objections in more detail. This document has been written primarily to satisfy this undertaking.

We will also use the document for consultation with the ten local parishes that support WING and seek their written confirmation of agreement with the report findings. These feedback comments and any amendments arising from them will be incorporated into a final version of the WING report that we can present as fully representative of local opinion. Although the initial version of our report has been prepared by representatives from all ten parishes that surround North Witney SDA, the inclusion of local parish feedback in our final version will give us a stronger mandate to influence the content of any proposal that is given permission to proceed.