Neighbours urged to fight £80m business park

12:00pm Saturday 16th February 2013 in News By Sam McGregor, covering Bicester. Call me on 01869 250197

Susan Harding Susan Harding

RESIDENTS are urging neighbours to make a stand over proposals to build an £80m business park.

Albion Land wants outline planning approval to develop a large site on the corner of Middleton Stoney Road and Howes Lane, in Bicester. The development could create up to 1,200 jobs.

Last August the firm unveiled plans that showed five three-storey warehouses and two smaller office blocks. The site is currently farmland and part of land designated for the 5,000 North West Bicester eco town.

Recently the firm has submitted an environmental impact assessment for the site, which looked at the effect development would have on the wildlife and ecology.

Now residents on the Greenwood estate expect the application to go before the planning committee soon, possibly March 21, and want to gather support to fight it.

One of those in opposition is Susan Harding, of Isis Avenue, Bicester, pictured. She said: “I would like to see the site as a buffer zone between the Greenwood homes estate and the proposed development of 5,000 eco homes.

“Providing somewhere for all of those people to spend their leisure time seems far more appropriate than building an industrial site with potentially three massive distribution warehouses with all the resulting traffic in the middle of a heavily populated residential area.”

People living on the Greenwood estate have raised concerns over noise, pollution, increased traffic and flooding and have started a petition.

They say the development is more suited to the edge of town, nearer junction nine of the M40, and away from homes. Albion Land did not comment.

Comments(13)

Severian says...
12:13pm Sat 16 Feb 13

I absolutely agree. From the second the Eco town was proposed developers have been looking at ways to grab their share of the rising land values, and this is probably just one of many such schemes coming forward.

This development is stupidly placed, and anything but green. Cherwell DC should throw this straight out.

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steve1955 says...
10:37am Sun 17 Feb 13

Whats wrong will developing the existing indusrial area is there not a derelict eyesore opposite the new Aldi and i suspect many more empty buildings in bicester and lets not forget Bicester barracks ,with the added bonus of a railwayline or is this not gree?

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Severian says...
12:13pm Sun 17 Feb 13

steve1955 wrote:
Whats wrong will developing the existing indusrial area is there not a derelict eyesore opposite the new Aldi and i suspect many more empty buildings in bicester and lets not forget Bicester barracks ,with the added bonus of a railwayline or is this not gree?
Steve

The problem with using previously developed land is that it costs a lot more than green fields without planning permission.

This is the idea behind the whole Eco town area - the developers will pick up the land dirt cheap, build on it, then sell it on at a massive profit.

Reusing old industrial land might be more green, but it won't make enough profit.

The whole project from the start has only been about making a small group of people very very rich.

And tough crap on the people of Bicester who don't like it.

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Watch your back says...
7:18pm Sun 17 Feb 13

I am going to start an action group to fight all other action groups for the sheer hell of it.

Why is it everybody looks for the negatives associated with every project, look at the long term, jobs, jobs, jobs, get a life and move on.

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Watch your back says...
7:22pm Sun 17 Feb 13

So Severine, your issue is about people making money is it?

You had just the same chance to make money as these developers but decided you did not want it, but will spend the rest of your life trying to ruin it for those that can. I am a millionaire and have got very rich by developing just like those are around Bicester, money before people in my world.

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Arkright says...
8:15pm Sun 17 Feb 13

Watch your back wrote:
So Severine, your issue is about people making money is it?

You had just the same chance to make money as these developers but decided you did not want it, but will spend the rest of your life trying to ruin it for those that can. I am a millionaire and have got very rich by developing just like those are around Bicester, money before people in my world.
Agree with the development or not ... the last thing we need is a megalomaniac !

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Severian says...
11:01am Mon 18 Feb 13

Watch your back wrote:
I am going to start an action group to fight all other action groups for the sheer hell of it.

Why is it everybody looks for the negatives associated with every project, look at the long term, jobs, jobs, jobs, get a life and move on.
We are looking for negatives because this is a badly planned development. It is meant to be a distribution centre (i.e. a hub where goods are transported to and then stored before being distributed to other locations). What this needs then is good road communications because there will be frequent heavy goods traffic.

The proposal is to site this on a road which is adjacent to housing, and when the rest of the devlopment is completed it will be completely surrounded by housing.

It is being built on a green field site.

The correct placement for a distribution site is nearer to the motorway/A34 and away from houses. So why not put it on the land right next to the M40/A34 junction?

"jobs, jobs, jobs" is not and never should be the only decider in planning. Particularly when the chances are that these will not be new jobs - just existing jobs relocated from another location.

And I have a life - I just want mine, and as many other people's as possible, to be a pleasant one not one spent living next to a lorry park.

p.s. I DO NOT live next to this development.

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Severian says...
11:04am Mon 18 Feb 13

Watch your back wrote:
So Severine, your issue is about people making money is it?

You had just the same chance to make money as these developers but decided you did not want it, but will spend the rest of your life trying to ruin it for those that can. I am a millionaire and have got very rich by developing just like those are around Bicester, money before people in my world.
Er, no we didn't. The land was earmarked under the old Local Development Plan as being green fields, not to be built on.

The Eco-town proposals which were sprung on us by Cherwell District Council and P3 Eco then announced that this land would be a 5000 home housing development.

The latest proposals are from a developer who is taking a chance that now CDC has opened the prospect of building on the farmland they will be able to shoe-horn in a totally inappropriate business development.

I have absolutely no issue with people making money. I do have an issue with a select group of individuals making money on the back of making local residents' lives miserable.

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to ny w says...
1:05pm Mon 18 Feb 13

I agree with Severian. If Cherwell had not designated all this land from the Middleton Stoney Road to Buckingham Road as ECO TOWN development land, this opportunistic application on the previously non zoned agricultural land would never have happened.
There must be a very strong chance that other, non ECO TOWN planning applications, may surface.
Cherwell may have made a rod for their own backs. This together with the potential economic disaster in waiting with the A2Donimion exemplar site that will kick off the ECO TOWN shambles, A site that may ever never be finished.( Cherwell's own figures reckon it will take 50 years if it is ever finished)!!

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zimmer, Wolvecote. says...
8:18am Tue 19 Feb 13

It seems that every development these days is either, in the wrong place, in the right place at the wrong time, too big, too small, not enough parking places, too many parking places that will attract traffic etc,etc,etc according to one or other "action group/friends of" that spring up every day. Any sane person can see through that, and hopefully start ignoring them, as the only thing that they are "friends of" is their property value. Can't we just get on and build things. No wonder the country is bankrupt, what will be the point in ten years, in adding £30K to your house price when nobody has any money to buy it.

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Severian says...
10:17am Tue 19 Feb 13

zimmer, Wolvecote. wrote:
It seems that every development these days is either, in the wrong place, in the right place at the wrong time, too big, too small, not enough parking places, too many parking places that will attract traffic etc,etc,etc according to one or other "action group/friends of" that spring up every day. Any sane person can see through that, and hopefully start ignoring them, as the only thing that they are "friends of" is their property value. Can't we just get on and build things. No wonder the country is bankrupt, what will be the point in ten years, in adding £30K to your house price when nobody has any money to buy it.
Absolutely - I suggest we start by building a levee on the Thames at Wolvercote, then put 10,000 houses on Port Meadow. Oxford has massive housing need and that land is just being wasted.

Oh and those people will need jobs, so put a big industrial estate on Godstow nunnery too, with the lorries coming round past the Red Lion.

Then I'd like to see how you and your neighbours felt about that?

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Severian says...
12:38am Wed 20 Feb 13

What's happened? The website says there are 11 comments on this thread, but none of them are visible any more?!

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Severian says...
12:38am Wed 20 Feb 13

Severian wrote:
What's happened? The website says there are 11 comments on this thread, but none of them are visible any more?!
How bizarre! As soon as I posted a comment, all the other comments reappeared!

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