The site, which will consist of around 9,000 homes, will stretch from the A41 Aston Clinton Road to the A418 Oxford Road.

A report identifying the south of Aylesbury as the best site for the development has now been circulated to key members at Aylesbury Vale District Council. It is expected to be given to the full council later this month and discussed at a cabinet meeting on June 26.

Homeowners will get their say during a six-week consultation period from July 17 to August 28.

The preference for land to the south east of Aylesbury was revealed at a public meeting in Bedgrove on Friday night. Only a handful of members of the public were there to hear the reasoning behind the choice.

Speaking at the meeting, Cllr Carole Paternoster, cabinet member for strategic planning, said officers had assessed each of the six sites around Aylesbury on deliverability, transport, sustainability, infrastructure, flood risk, water supply, sewage, landscape and utilities.

"The officers hadn't received all the information until last week but all the evidence points towards a southern growth arc from Aylesbury," Cllr Paternoster said.

"The south has the best transport performance for all the options tested and although there's a greater flood risk to the south there's more opportunity to put in drainage points to stop flood water reaching the town. Water supply can be taken from anywhere and sewage is easier to connect in the south. The north has more valuable landscape – BT would prefer the north, electricity prefers the south and gas say either way."

Cllr Paternoster said the housing growth had been imposed on the Vale by the Government. "The whole timetable for this has been set by the Government and if we don't comply they will take our planning powers away and then we won't have a say. Then it will be out of our hands and out of the democratic arena. We need to make sure we are a part of that process. Let's get the best we can for ourselves out of the development we are being forced to take," Cllr Paternoster said.

But she told residents of her own concerns about developing the south of the town. Cllr Paternoster is also ward representative for Aston Clinton, and lives in the area. She urged people to air their opinion during the public consultation.

Aylesbury MP David Lidington said the growth agenda could lead to the council being held to ransom by developers.

He explained: "With changes to the way developers are asked to contribute to infrastructure such as schools and doctors surgeries, developers have the card of going to appeal and saying the council is being completely unreasonable if they're not happy with the size of the contribution they are asked to make.

"The council needs those homes built and will also have to pick up the cost of the inquiry if it loses. It's vital that AVDC has some say rather than no say on the development to stop Aylesbury simply coalescing," he said.

Parish councils in Stoke Mandeville, Weston Turville, Aston Clinton and Stone have been informed of the development and will be discussing its implications this week.

After the meeting, Cllr Alan Sherwell, AVDC Lib Dem leader, said the report by officers on the siting of the new houses was wrong.

"I accept the development and we need to make it as effective as possible for the people who are here already. The worst traffic congestion in the mornings is on the Tring Road and Aylesbury Road, Bierton. We need a relief road to the north but no one is saying we need one to the south, and a relief road in the north would also make our case for the new rail line stronger."

The findings of the examination in public will be reported back to the council by October this year with the Government passing its judgement about the same time.

If approved, the greenfield land could be adopted by early 2009 with the first diggers on site by the middle of the year.

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Some of your comments so far...

Sir,

We read that 'a report identifying the south of Aylesbury as the best site (for new development) has been circulated to key members at AVDC'.

Cllr Paternoster says '...all the evidence points towards a southern growth arc from Aylesbury.' She goes on to say 'the south has the best transport performance. Sewage is easier to connect in the south.'

And then we're told that the site will stretch from the A41 to the A418.

Um, isn't that east of Aylesbury?

Roger Carey
Burcott

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Where Will They Work?
Experts naively used to believe that employers follow their workers. So all you had to do was build a new town and companies will flock to it. That misconception has been proved wrong again and again all over the world. For many of us the available jobs are in London and the Thames valley corridor. There is a way to change this: It has been shown time and time again that the best attraction for business is a vibrant academic environment. A technical real-sciences oriented university will provide jobs and attract high-tech business to our Vale. Everybody will be paying lip service to the concern about the extra traffic the new 9,000 households will generate. However the planners can actually impact this issue. Usually, the business parks are planned in the outskirts of towns. I urge BCC to consider first seeding business centres and then planning the houses around them. This will reduce the commuting burden and would be very 'Green'. I call on the BCC to show where people will work before approving any planes and put in place NOW as many attractions as possible for employers and moreover to actively help the existing high learning institutes and encourage the opening of new ones. I would also encourage the Bucks herald to send some reporters to learn how massive development such as the one planned for the south of Aylesbury were handled in other towns and what lessons were learnt. Come to think of it, I hope someone at BCC and AVDC already did that.

Dr. Eli Y. Kling (Telecomuter)

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As residents of Stoke Mandeville we are very concerned and alarmed at the proposal to build 9,000 more houses between the A418 and the A41 as this will have a significant and very detrimental impact on the whole area.

We have seen a huge increase in the amount of traffic on all roads into the village since the developments on County Farm and on the old Stoke Mandeville Hospital site and we too, experience traffic jams on Lower Road and Station Road at peak periods.

Our councillors have been saying for a long time that they must make sure that the developers contribute to the infrastructure but so far there is little evidence of this happening. Where are the new schools, the health services, the new roads, the improved community facilities? Nowhere to be seen. It is a pointless exercise to mess around with the traffic lights in various areas to try and improve the traffic flow. That is not what is needed. Cramming blocks of flats onto every available site in Aylesbury is making matters worse. As Cllr Sherwell pointed out, we need a northern bypass at the very least - and we needed it 10 years ago. As with so many 'strategic planning' schemes, it's a case of too little and too late.

We recently viewed Aylesbury from the monument on the Chiltern hills where the results of what has already happened in the Vale are clear to see. The raw, brick- red scars of the new developments have already spread into the surrounding area like a cancer - and we haven't seen anything yet! This is before Berryfields and the Weedon Hill developments have been completed.

There will not be much of 'England's green and pleasant land' left in this part of the country soon.

We have no faith in the consultation process taking place in July and August - well timed yet again to coincide with the holiday period. It will have very little effect on the ultimate decision because our councillors have already given in to central government pressure.

Nevertheless, we would urge everyone living in the affected villages to write to their councillors and MP as this is still supposedly a democratic country and they are there to represent the views of their constituents. Speak up now or suffer the consequences!

Yours faithfully,

Pat & David Aylett, 10 Lower Road, Stoke Mandeville, Aylesbury.

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I live in Stoke Mandeville near the railway station and therefore we are plagued and have been for 28 years, by people parking in our road to avoid paying for the car park.

With the new housing, 9000 in total, on average there will probably be 2 adults per household ( 18000). If only 1% of these people work in London there will be a further 180 cars trying to park at Stoke Mandeville station where the car park is already nearly full.

My husband travels into London at least twice a week, at peak times he often sees people standing from Missenden in the mornings with the new parkway people will be standing from Stoke Mandeville.

With a Parkway with 500 parking spaces to the north of Aylesbury, it would make more sense to build further housing on that side and not join up the villages to Aylesbury in the south. Where are all these 500 people going to come from? Do the powers that be think that people will go there from the south of Aylesbury to park!

Will there be a new southern road or will all the traffic be on the Station road which in the mornings can take one up to 5 minutes to get onto.

I was born and bred in Stoke Mandeville and have seen Aylesbury extended from a small market town and I am only 53! I understand that things have to change but there is a lot more space to the northside with far less disruption and a northern bypass to link the A41 through Bicester to the M40 would seem like common sense.

Is the council under pressure from developers who have speculated over the years and bought up the land now up for development!

How will the schools cope! A new school on the north side would serve Watermead, Weedon Hill and further developments on the north side.

I will attend the meetings but as usual, when it gets to that stage, decisions will probably have already been made and we will be presented with a 'fait accompli'. It makes one wonder why we bother to vote at all!


Jane Stratton

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