I WONDER about the future development plans for Oxfordshire and how they affect Bicester, ‘the fastest growing town in Europe’.

Some clues are found in the Oxfordshire Infrastructure Strategy report (OxIS) which plans for 267,000 more people, 123,500 more houses and huge economic expansion within the next 23 years.

But it admits to a £8-9 billion funding gap for the required infrastructure.

Where on earth will all these people fit into our rural county of Oxfordshire?

A diagram shows nine growth zones radiating out from Oxford along the major roads like the petals of a daisy, leaving little of the countryside unaffected by development.

One development zone stretches up from Oxford to Bicester, facilitated by new road building and railway expansion.

OxIS was open for public comment but who knew about this 226 page report and how were we to respond?

I saw a brief item on TV about the consultation just three days before the deadline, an inadequate response time.

With such huge-scale development looming, Oxfordshire residents should be adequately informed and consulted well before their county mutates into a congested and polluted 'silicon valley'.

I heard about OxIS through the excellent work of the Campaign to Protect Rural England (CPRE) and Need Not Greed Oxfordshire (NNGO) which campaign for genuinely affordable housing in the right numbers and right places in our county.

Both CPRE and NNGO want to reduce the negative effects of development on the countryside. They accept the population of Oxfordshire will expand and so should employment opportunities, but find the OxIS estimates too large.

CPRE South Oxfordshire chairman, Professor Richard Harding, identifies that the planned population growth rate in the report is 2.7 times that forecast by the Office of National Statistics.

Oxford City Council leader Bob Price, when interviewed, refers to the OxIS growth figures as facts which should be accepted, rather than hazy estimates or aspirations.

How outrageous, when Oxford City is shelving its responsibility to house a sufficient number of its residents. It’s asking the districts to accept its 'unmet housing need'; not even properly quantified because it doesn’t yet have a local plan of its own.

The Cherwell District Council (CDC) Adopted Local Plan caters for 22,840 new houses across the district.

But before the ink was dry, CDC offered to build 4,400 more houses to contribute to Oxford’s unproven ‘unmet housing need’, squeezed in between Oxford and the villages of Kidlington, Yarton, Begbroke and Woodstock, in a massive urban sprawl which invades Cherwell’s green belt.

CDC is currently consulting residents on this with October 10th as the closing date. You can respond by visiting cherwell.gov.uk

The OxIS and Local Plans refer to 'green’ and ‘blue’ infrastructure, neat planning terms that parcel up the entire natural environment into three words.

These don’t reveal that Oxfordshire's environment has evolved over billions of years, producing the fragile ecosystems we depend on.

The road and house-building proposed in the OxIS will irreversibly damage these.

The 'State of Nature in Oxfordshire 2017 ' report records a massive loss in biodiversity due to man-made intervention which cannot be repaired artificially, although clever manipulation of 'Biodiversity Offsetting Metrics’ by developers makes it look as if they can.

Economic expansion at whatever cost underpins OxIS, not the wellbeing of Oxfordshire residents who will suffer increased air, noise and light pollution alongside shortages of schools, medical facilities, water, utilities and natural green spaces, whilst infrastructure investment lags behind development.

Planning for projected infrastructure need is good but the OxIS should support realistic, properly financed growth figures and the strategy be reconsidered.

To read the OxIS report see bit.ly/2yqdACv or the State of Nature in Oxfordshire report at wildoxfordshire.org.uk