If you want to stop an enormous industrial development in open countryside at Faringdon - including seven 25 metre high buildings, a data centre and 2 multistorey car parks – barely half a mile from housing and the new school - please come along to Little Coxwell Village Hall at 7.00pm on Friday 14 July. YOU CAN HELP! Supporters will discuss a plan of action, and if you can spare a couple of hours to help distribute information – WE NEED YOU!
Most people in Faringdon, who should be part of the democratic process, do not even know about this planning application. We want to let them know, while there is still time for everyone’s voice to be heard. By working together, we can try to ensure that EVERYONE’S right to be heard is upheld. The future of Faringdon as a rural market town, its surrounding countryside and the character of the Western Vale is at stake - and even the health and wellbeing of residents.
The landowner who has submitted this outrageous application on agricultural land has also put forward the WHOLE of Wicklesham Lodge Farm to the Vale of White Horse District Council as a development site- for housing, industry, hotels – you name it. If this industrial development goes ahead, what will prevent him turning the whole farm into a huge housing and industrial complex?
HOW DID IT COME TO THIS!?
From 2008 to 2016 the owner of Wicklesham Quarry SSSI badgered the Vale District Council to have the Quarry included in the Local Plan as an industrial site. The land was turned down, having been assessed by qualified, independent experts, URS LTD. They said it would more than ‘double’ the amount of employment land Faringdon needed, and that it was ‘unsustainable’ and ‘unjustified’. Four reports upheld this view. The Vale District Council turned it down YET AGAIN in 2016.
However, Faringdon Town Council, acting in concert with the landowners, who sat on the Neighbourhood Plan Committee and wrote the policy for their own land, used a Neighbourhood Plan in order to deliberately flout the District Council, in the full knowledge that this policy was in breach of the Local Plan. The Town Council and landowners: -
- Concealed the environmental status of the land (as a Conservation Target Area, with Priority Habitat and Protected Species)
- Wrongly claimed it was a ‘brown field site’, and
- Ignored the Sustainability Appraisal- in which Wicklesham Quarry scored WORSE than any other site.
Local people who fought to have the quarry restored in accordance with its planning conditions raised over £15,000 to take the case to the High Court. The judge agreed that:-
- Faringdon Council was WRONG to state it was a ‘brown field site’
- The neighbourhood plan could NOT ‘make a provision for a county matter’ (i.e. overturn the existing planning conditions)
- The policy WAS IN CONFLICT with the Local plan- because Wicklesham Quarry is outside the development boundary.
However, the judge did NOT order the plan, or the policy, to be quashed! This left the neighbourhood plan with a ZOMBIE POLICY that has come back to threaten Faringdon.
Please come and say hello to supporters of the Campaign to Protect Wicklesham Quarry from Development, and see if you can help us beat this application. I look forward to welcoming you on 14th July!
If you can’t make it on 14th July but want to help, please drop me an email: protectwicklesham@gmail.com