Scenario 4 – Carterton Focus

For similar reasons to those outlined in relation to Scenario 3 (Witney Focus), the Cotswolds National Landscape (CNL) Board (‘the Board’) would not support Scenario 4.

4. Carterton is a good location to focus development because: 1. There are brown field sites suitable for development 2. There are good prospects for employment within the town, reducing the need to commute 3. Carterton is not part of the AONB 4. Active travel is easier where the land is predominately flat 5. The proposed rail link to Oxford would reduce the impact of new houses on road commuting

The summary set out in the consultation is considered accurate. Carterton has grown to become a substantial settlement, but it is one divided between its role supporting a major military operation, which is itself a more than single site employer, and the fact that the civilian town is in many respects physically and otherwise segregated, and to a great extent is a commuter settlement looking beyond the town for employment and many services. The centre of Carterton is substantially improved with two foodstores and some supporting commercial uses, but opportunities to consolidate its retail and central place function further seem hard to identify. There is a wider range of local employment opportunities but the development of long-allocated employment land, which has been serviced for some years, has been relatively slow, and the military and its supporting contractors dominate. The level of land control by the Ministry of Defence has significantly affected the delivery of regeneration on previously developed land in the town. Former REEMA sites stand vacant having been cleared over 10 years ago and despite their allocation for development both in LP2031 and its predecessor. The main terminal loop of the trunk Stagecoach S1 service thus operates through open land, unhelpfully intervening between substantial development and some key bus stops. It makes great sense to “roll forward” these allocations, but a realistic and properly evidenced view needs to be taken as to what housing needs these sites will meet, and when. Assumptions expressed within the consultation paper that operational land within the base will become available to meet development needs would need to be extremely rigorously evidenced and tested. Looking at wider experience, we consider that reliance on MoD sites becoming available within anticipated timescales – or at all - needs to be treated with great caution. Given that military activity has been progressively consolidated at RAF Brize Norton, and that the tempo and intensity of armed services operations – including disaster relief - generally looks more likely to increase than diminish, we see no credible prospect of previously developed land in the control of the Ministry of Defence whether directly or indirectly, becoming surplus to requirements in the foreseeable future. Carterton is increasingly inter-dependent with Witney and there is increasing evidence that its relatively affordable housing is causing a degree of inter-action with Oxford that is greater than has 20 been the case historically. If so, this has significant negative implications for the already seriously over-burdened A40. However, while use of the car to reach Oxford from Carterton means that even accounting for serious peak delays, a trip can be expected to take well under an hour to destinations on the north and west side, an equivalent bus journey takes a great deal longer, and suffers from serious delays and unreliability due to congestion east of Witney. To date, the lack of sufficient demand and the intractable operational challenges presented by the A40 have seriously undermined attempts to run faster services, including at peak times, that bypass Witney. While planned bus lanes east of Eynsham will greatly assist in addressing these problems at root, it will need a means of running buses on a consistently free-flowing basis between Barnard Gate and Eynsham to both Wolvercote and Botley, if public transport is going to offer a realistic choice for most Oxford-bound journeys from Carterton. At this writing, it is unclear what can be expected in this regard, and when. If Carterton is to meet a much higher proportion of the District’s housing needs, we would emphasise that this places an even greater necessity to effect bus priority on a seamless basis from the A40 east of Witney towards the city. The immediate vicinity is relatively unconstrained in terms of designations, landscape, ecology and topography. Notwithstanding this, to the north and west, it will be relatively hard to expand the town, across land that needs to remain undeveloped. To the east, the town would coalesce with Brize Norton, which is very unlikely to be appropriate. The military airfield and associated facilities acts as a fixed barrier to the south that has already long since been reached. The experience at Shilton Park and North Carterton also presents excellent evidence that urban extensions have not proven to be easy to integrate into the existing urban fabric, and as a result, provision of conveniently-available bus services has in these cases been impossible, despite the assumptions made at allocation and in master planning. Urban design has also been extremely unhelpful to maintaining services, owing to parked cars and unrealistically slow and convoluted bus routing. This suggests that growth at Carterton is more likely to take the form of a closely-linked new village or town, to the west and/or north, rather than a conventional urban extension. This would need to be of sufficient scale to meet as many of its own needs internally as possible, and to and through which the main public transport spine between Oxford, Witney and Carterton should pass. A location that is able to host substantial employment would also meet wider needs and help diversify the local economy. This suggests that growth located towards the A40 and Witney would be advantageous. We return to discuss this opportunity later.