No...

Jane Tomlinson, Campaign to Protect Rural England

The land south of Grenoble Road is Green Belt land. The Green Belt was established to protect the character and setting of Oxford city and the surrounding villages.

It’s the reason why Oxford is such an attractive place to live, work and study. Why build on and destroy the very thing that makes Oxford what it is?

Oxford City Council is already committed to building 8,000 new houses and said only last year that this was all that was required.

It should talk to all the other local councils to find the best possible sites, not just dump a large-scale development in the Green Belt.

Of course there is another motive. The city council is one of the owners of the land concerned and would profit from any development.

Rather than looking for ever-increasing expansion, it would be better for the city to understand and celebrate its role at the centre of the county as a whole, and to share growth with other neighbouring towns so that people can live and work in thriving local communities.

The key characteristic of the Green Belt is its permanence. Open the floodgates and faster than you can say ‘bulldozer’ it will be gone forever.

Yes...

Ed Turner, Oxford City Council deputy leader

Oxford’s housing crisis is getting worse and worse. Average rents make up over half the average salary, prices for even the smallest homes are way beyond what most can hope to afford, over 6,000 applicants are languishing on the council’s housing list. We have children crammed into hideously overcrowded conditions, and there are real worries about rough sleeping.


Yet the city’s economy, although wages are not especially high, continues to do relatively well.


This means people are increasingly faced with a choice of continuing to live near their work, or move away from their city, and have a long and potentially costly commute (or give up their jobs). If this situation continues, it will strangle our economy.


There is a further pressure, too – without expanding Oxford, sites such as Oxford Stadium within the city will come under increasing pressure to be developed for housing.


The only solution is to extend Oxford to the south east. We are not talking about a rural idyll – the Green Belt there protects, for instance, a sewage farm.


We either agree to expand our city, or appease the anti-growth, “I’m alright Jack” lobby of the CPRE.