Welcome to the Baldons WebsiteMon, 17th February 2020

Proposed Oxford to Cambridge Expressway

This has become a huge issue locally.

Latest Update (26 Nov 2019):

In advance of next month's general election, last week the Expressway Action Group (EAG) conducted a survey of all 27 prospective parliamentary candidates in Oxfordshire asking them whether they support or oppose the proposed Oxford to Cambridge Expressway.

Of the 20 that responded or indicated a position, from the Conservative, Lib Dem, Labour, Independent, Green, Brexit and other parties not one supported the scheme.  All were against, reflecting the county-wide opposition to the scheme.

Full details and comments from all candidates can be seen at www.expresswayactiongroup.com.  

The general consensus in detailed responses was that the investment would be better spent on improving the rail infrastructure and sorting out A34 congestion as this would cause least harm to the environment and reduce travel times.

The Previous Update (24 July 2019) can be accessed here.

The Expressway Action Group now has has in excess of 35 parishes involved including the Baldons Parish Council  The steering group lead by Peter Rutt has  Elizabeth Gillespie,  Dawn McGiveron and John Clark as members  and the group is a stakeholder  representing the various villages and providing information to support the evaluation of the route option  The group are not opposing the road in principle but by providing information on biodiversity and ecology and the views of local communities aim to help  Highways England  make the best possible evaluation of the scheme taking account of practicalities, problems and costs. We still hope to provide enough information to ensure that the recommended route goes north and west of Oxford. For full details see here.

Follow this link to see a Google map of the proposed corridor. You can zoom in and out to get a better idea.  At the moment maps from Highways England are poor and we are chasing them for more accurate boundaries.

You can find Highways England's detailed "reasoning" for their choice here.  There is a summary booklet here.

The Expressway and its 1 million new houses is therefore going ahead - and where the road is placed will determine the housing developments. 

The plan is to accommodate 300,000 more homes in Oxfordshire and ~900,000 more residents. This is double the existing number of houses and will, needless to say, profoundly change the nature of the county, never mind our immediate environment.

Highways England will now start a 12 month program of on-the-ground studies of potential routes within the corridor, and by Autumn 2019 they will be ready with a shortlist of 5 or 6 ‘best options’ routes which they will take into a Public Consultation.

This will be via a series of open meetings across the area where residents, businesses and environmental groups can express opinion on each route option, point out errors and omissions and generally participate / feed back to the Highways team.  Our understanding is that the Consultation will be led by Highways’ routes team rather than via our local Councils.

We believe that one of the key deciders in final route selection will be the relative environmental and wildlife harm each route would cause - and during the 12 months that Highways are studying the two branches of the corridor for routes, they have said they will be looking not just at the ‘known’ wildlife reserves like Otmoor and the SSSI’s but also at unlisted sites with rare and special wildlife and habitat. We can help with this!

Highways have told us that all the wildlife / heritage and environmental data you all supplied to them via EAG’s portal has been added to their maps, and will influence the routes: but this extra 12 month field study gives all EAG member parishes and communities a new ‘window’ to send in more and better wildlife and other data to the Highways technical teams, so they know where to look for special sites and high-risk areas. 

The earlier we can get this to them the better: Waterstock has been gathering wildlife evidence in their wetlands and river areas using static wildlife ‘trail’ cameras, and in Cuddesdon we’re doing the same, using low-cost cameras we found on Amazon for less than £60...   Why not ask your local wildlife people where the best spots are, and join in? Let us know if you can help, and we’ll co-ordinate and submit to Highways’ team as before.

The Parish Council will be sending out further information in due course.

The Expressway action group (EAG) are seeking more information from the Highways about the route planning to give a better idea of those communities likely to be most affected by the options and those less so.

It is also likely that villages will have to undertake substantial fundraising and campaigning in preparation for and the during the consultation period in 2019.

Dawn McGiveron and John Clark are on the committee of the Expressway Action Group.