LEAKED documents have revealed plans for another major housing estate in Wallingford.

Warwick-based Gallagher Estates has proposed building 400 homes on a farmer's field north west of the town.

The 21-hectare, L-shaped field sits east of Wantage Road and north of Wilding Road, and the estate would be accessed off Wantage Road.

Added to the 550 homes being built south of Wantage Road and the 550 proposed at Winterbrook, the 1,500 houses would increase the size of the town by about a quarter.

Former town councillor Bernard Stone, who long campaigned for sustainable development in Wallingford, said: "It's all part of the excessive development in the area."

He said residents in Wantage Road who had caught wind of the plans were already 'pretty concerned' about the traffic impact.

Gallagher has identified the site in an early-stage submission to Oxfordshire County Council, seen by this paper, about the potential traffic impact of housing.

In the submission, Gallagher said its traffic consultants Jubb had carried out a week-long traffic survey of Wantage Road.

That survey found that at morning rush hour on Wantage Road an average 576 cars travelled each way between 8am and 9am.

The average evening rush hour from 5am to 6pm saw 597 cars go each way.

Gallagher said it would carry out a full analysis of collisions on the road in due course and make a safety audit at the proposed point where the estate entrance would be.

The developer also noted that there was potential for a new primary school on the site, which would only leave room for 350 homes rather than 400, but it said that option was 'subject to discussion'.

The company would still need to apply for and win planning permission for the estate, but assuming that was granted, Gallagher estimated the first homes could be built and occupied this year and the entire estate completed by 2024.

Mr Stone also said Wallingford had been 'let down' more generally by national planners and South Oxfordshire District Council.

He said: "Developers have just had a free-for-all, building anywhere and everywhere – there is not strategy or masterplan that I can see at all."

The new Wantage Road estate may be scuppered before it even reaches the planning stage however.

County councillor for Wallingford Lynda Atkins said some of the fields north of Wallingford overlay large deposits of sand and gravel.

Current county policy is that housing should not be built over a site where a quarry could be dug.