Local residents are fighting back after three Oxford colleges announced plans to sell land on Oxfordshire's Green Belt for development. Magdalen, Brasenose, Merton and the University itself stand to make in excess of £1 billion by offering up thousands of acres of rural land, The Oxford Student can reveal.
Residents of the affected areas claim that the countryside will be "wrecked", while several environmentalists have accused the colleges of blatant profiteering to "sustain their wine stocks for the dons". The three colleges and the University announced their plans at a public enquiry into planning policy back in January.
Magdalen College, in conjunction with Thames Water and Oxford City Council, hopes to build up to 8,000 houses on a site next to the Oxford Science Park on Green Belt land to the south of the city. Planners say work on the site could begin as early as 2010. Brasenose also has plans for a smaller development in the nearby village of Garsington. In the north of Oxford, Merton College and the University itself have plans for a joint development of around 300 acres of land near the village of Begbroke. The overwhelming majority of residents strongly oppose the plans.
In Garsington, a village that will be particularly affected by the proposals, a group Protect Our Green Belt Two has been set up to publicise the proposals and encourage residents to write letters of protest. A meeting was held in the Garsington village hall in December 2006 to discuss the issue. Chris Wright, leader of the group Protect Our Green Belt Two and representative of Garsington Parish Council, said, "More than 99% of the attendees were strongly opposed to any revision of the Green Belt. The village hall was packed, and people were spilling out onto the street. The real question that should be asked is why should the Green Belt be built on just to enable Magdalen College, Oxford, to make huge capital gains?" Marian Gunter, a resident of Garsington, said, "It's an issue that people really care about. We have fought long and hard to keep our Green Belt, and we will continue to do so."
Several environmentalists have joined the campaign against the University's proposals. Andy Boddington, campaign manager for the Campaign for the Protection of Rural England (CPRE) Oxfordshire, said, "Oxfordshire's Green Belt is under threat like never before. If Oxford is allowed to sprawl onto the countryside, the character of the countryside will be wrecked. Once development in the Green Belt is permitted, developers will be queuing up to build a city that sprawls from Kidlington to Abingdon. It's already got a name, Oxingdon: Twinned with Los Angeles. The colleges may be institutes of learning, but when it comes to the Green Belt, they act like any other developer. There is a substantial amount of money to be made. It'll be hundreds of millions. It's just a question of how many hundreds."
Bruce Tremayne, chairman of CPRE Oxfordshire, agreed. "A developer can fit 30 £250,000 houses on a development site of an acre. Currently, farmland typically goes for about £3,000 an acre, but with planning permission, a landowner can fetch between half a million and a million pounds for an acre. The gap is simply huge. But of course the poor Oxford colleges need the money to sustain their wine stocks for the dons."
South Oxfordshire District Council (SODC) is backing local residents in their campaign against the proposals. Gill Oliver, Planning Policy manager for SODC, said, "As a district council, we are very much opposed to expansion on the Green Belt... [There are] alternative ways of developing the local area."
However, developers argue that the only way to safeguard the economy in years to come is for an "urban extension" into Oxfordshire's 50-year-old green belt. David Lock Associates, an urban design consultancy representing Magdalen College, said, "A review of the Green Belt is justified on the basis that this represents the most sustainable of the available options for development [of Oxford]. The development sites have very few features of identified habitat value." A representative from Brasenose stated, "When there is a need for additional housing, the expansion of existing settlements is a tried and tested method. The less financially able will be forced permanently out of the City and either commuting will increase or the City will lose part of its workforce permanently."
At a Kidlington Parish council meeting last September, Tim Del Nevo, Land Agent for Oxford University, said, "As a charity, the University had been advised that to ignore the opportunity would be negligent. It had a duty to maximise its assets. The University was in a position to take a less than commercial view and did not like upsetting neighbouring communities.
Professor David Clary, President of Magdalen College, told The Oxford Student, "Supplying houses is clearly important, but so is providing them in a sustainable location... [There is] compelling evidence that Oxford is the most sustainable location in the country, with the lowest level of car use and highest level of public transport use for journeys to work. An urban extension to Oxford, south of Grenoble Road, is therefore likely to achieve similar sustainable patterns of movement. By investing in the Science Park and the Grenoble Road developments, Magdalen College will also provide urgently needed housing and diversity for people in Oxford."
Last year, New College sold a 113-acre site with planning permission in Aylesbury for around £60 million. Latest news from the Halifax, the UK's biggest mortgage lender, suggests that house prices are 11.1% higher this year. Chris Wright said, "Our real concern is that the sense of community will disappear if the development goes ahead. In all the local villages, there is a strong sense of local community that you just don't find in a city." Hector Guinness, Co-Chair of the OUSU Environment and Ethics committee, said, "I do not regard the Green Belt as 'holy' green land that must be protected at all costs. However, the value of the green belt in environmental services and aesthetic pleasure means that decisions must be taken with great care, and the colleges should see the Green Belt as a last resort."