On 10th October a CrowdJustice Appeal goes live! We hope that supporters of the Campaign to Protect Wicklesham Quarry will help us to take our fight to Judicial Review. It's a BIG step to take, and without you we cannot do it. Many local people oppose Faringdon Council's plan to turn the A420 at Faringdon into an industrial development corridor. It will bring an unsustainable level of 24 hour HGV traffic onto the A420, and destroy Faringdon's nationally designated Earth Science Site SSSI, which forms part of West Oxfordshire Heights Conservation Target Area, and hosts Priority Habitat and European Protected Species. It is our most important site for geo and biodiversity. Faringdon Council's plan to industrialize open countryside along the A420 and allow a 20 acre logistics site is NOT about a need to provide more employment land. Throughout the existing employment sites in Faringdon are numerous empty units with notices saying "To Let". Many have been empty so long they are derelict and unfit for use. Others have never been updated since they were built over 50 years ago. There is also undeveloped land available for new business units that has stood empty for over 3 years. For five years, the 4&20 site was allowed to remain undeveloped, until “Faringdon Business Park”- which was never built - met the test for it to be used for shops and housing. If the plan for Wicklesham Quarry- which is agricultural land and part of Wicklesham Lodge Farm - is passed by the back-door route of the Neighbourhood Plan, some Faringdon landowners of business sites are poised to make applications for even more housing. They will argue their sites are no longer needed- as Wicklesham Quarry would more than DOUBLE the independent Employment Land Assessment for Faringdon (URS Ltd 2013). What is happening at Faringdon is blatant land speculation. When landowners use the planning system simply to increase land values, the inevitable results are unplanned development, the loss of the countryside, and deliberate dereliction of existing sites. Please help to prevent the destruction of Faringdon’s beautiful landscape by making a donation to the CrowdJustice Appeal on 10th October! Thank you!