Issue - meetings

Construction of a park & ride car park providing 850 car parking spaces, cycle spaces, motorcycle spaces, electric vehicle charging points, bus shelters, landscaping, external lighting, public open space, toilets, seating, fencing, habitat creation,

 

 

Meeting: 08/03/2021 - Planning & Regulation Committee (Item 6)

6 Construction of a park & ride car park providing 850 car parking spaces, cycle spaces, motorcycle spaces, electric vehicle charging points, bus shelters, landscaping, external lighting, public open space, toilets, seating, fencing, habitat creation, drainage features, new access from Cuckoo Lane, new roundabout with access onto A40, an eastbound bus lane approximately 6.5km in length from the park & ride site to the A40 bridge over the Duke's Cut Canal, two sections of westbound bus lane (each approximately 500m in length), new shared use footway/cycleway, widening of Cassington New Bridge, junction improvements, new crossings, new footbridge alongside Cassington Halt Bridge, and associated works on Land West of Cuckoo Lane and Adjacent to the A40, Eynsham, West Oxfordshire OX29 4PU - Application R3.0057/19 pdf icon PDF 1004 KB

The report sets out the proposed development for which planning permission has been applied under application no. R3.0057/19 for the construction of a Park & Ride car park on land West of Cuckoo Lane and Adjacent to the A40, Eynsham. The report considers the application against the development plan and other material considerations including consultation responses and representations received and recommends that subject to conditions to be determined by the Assistant Director of Strategic Infrastructure and Planning and to no new material considerations arising during the open consultation period, that the application be approved.

 

Subject to the satisfaction of the Assistant Director of Strategic Infrastructure and Planning in consultation with the committee Chairman and Deputy Chairman that following the end of the current consultation period no new material considerations have arisen, it is RECOMMENDED that planning permission for R3.0057/19 be approved subject toconditions to be determined by the Assistant Director of Strategic Infrastructure and Planning, to include those set out in Annex 1 to the report.

 

 

 

 

Additional documents:

Decision:

Approved

Minutes:

The Committee considered (PN7) a report setting an application for the construction of a Park & Ride car park on land West of Cuckoo Lane and adjacent to the A40, Eynsham.

 

Officers presented the report together with an update detailing a notification from the National Planning Case Work Unit at the Ministry for Housing, Communities and local Government that a request had been received to have the application called in for determination by the Secretary of State. The case officer at the Unit had advised that they would be unlikely make a decision on whether to call in the application until a decision had been made at local level and so officer advice to the Committee was to proceed with consideration of the application in the normal way.

 

Officers then responded to questions from:

 

Councillor Walker - access onto Cuckoo Lane and whether that would be one or two way would be a matter for the applicants to respond to. With regard to Horsemere Lane feasibility work was under way to determine the signal timing and layout of the junction at Cassington and would be taken into account as part of the closure of Horsemere Lane but the intention was that Horsemere lane would close.

 

Consensus was that it should be two-way.

 

Councillor Johnston – as the application was for works connected with the park and ride site and A40 the question whether or not this proposal compromised the future provision of a railway line between Witney and Oxford might be a matter for the applicants to respond to.

 

Councillor Handley – the application has been submitted with the expectation that it be determined as expeditiously as possible.

 

Dan Levy spoke as both a West Oxfordshire District Councillor for Eynsham Ward and also as the District Cycling Champion. Like most people, he encouraged use of public transport,and appreciated the thinking behind this scheme and while there were good things included in the plans he did not believe it should be approved.

 

The Park & Ride, dualling, bus lanes, etc, were designed pre-pandemic with no certainty what the levels of travelling and commuting into, for example, Oxford would be when things returned to some sort of normality.  The original modelling of traffic flows had been widely criticized because of a failure to accurately determine where cars were heading beyond Wolvercote.  However, even if it had been impeccable, it was certainly now outdated and it seemed unwise to use it as a basis for such a massive scheme.

 

Also, modelling had looked at A40 traffic rather than including the effect on other roads, such as the B4049, from traffic going to the Park and Ride nor the effect on traffic heading west on the A40, which was substantially worse than east.  

 

The County Council had agreed a motion, brought by Councillor Mathew, to explore the transport options within the A40 corridor which might include a railway and the railway minister had suggested that such a scheme was worth exploring so surely it would  ...  view the full minutes text for item 6