COUNCILLORS will not demand the controversial Oxford-Cambridge expressway is ditched – but will instead ask for a ‘fuller’ consultation on it.

Many Conservative councillors said they were opposed to the £4bn new road but wanted their electors to have a say before it might be ruled out by the Government.

David Bartholomew, the council’s cabinet member for finance, dismissed the project as a ‘madcap scheme dreamt up by civil servants’ to be supported by ‘vain politicians’.

But he said Oxfordshire residents must be asked for their views – in a way that might strengthen the case against building the road.

Labour and Liberal Democrat councillors wanted the leader of the council, Ian Hudspeth, to write to the Government demanding a full consultation before a final route is even considered.

But Mr Bartholomew said the letter would have only ended up in a bin at the Department for Transport.

A consultation on the expressway is expected to take place later this year, with that informing where a route might run.

The Government has already said it might build the expressway either east or west of Oxford, pending further work.

But yesterday Labour group leader Liz Brighouse delivered a broadside against Tory councillors who favoured a consultation above establishing a county council view united and opposed to the expressway.

Mrs Brighouse said: “If you don’t have the confidence or understand [residents] enough I don’t know what you’re doing [in the council].”

Fellow Labour councillor, John Sanders, called for the expressway project to be axed by the Government.

Mr Sanders said he believed the new road would not ‘benefit the people of Oxfordshire’ and would ‘cause damage to the countryside and unnecessary cost without reducing the impact of traffic in the area’.

But Conservative councillor Eddie Reeves accused opposition members of being ‘hyperbolic and shrill'.

Ultimately, a Conservative motion asking for a ‘fuller’ consultation than one initially planned for later this year was passed.

Conservatives and Lib Dems voted in favour; Labour’s councillors abstained.

Other anti-expressway motions, tabled by Mr Sanders and by Liberal Democrat councillor Tim Bearder, were both narrowly defeated.

The expressway is supported by the Department for Transport and the National Infrastructure Commission (NIC).

The NIC has said the new road will be vital to support up to one million new homes that it said must be built to harness economic growth between Oxford and Cambridge before 2050.

At least 100,000 new homes will be built in Oxfordshire before the 2030s and will be supported by the Oxfordshire Growth Deal. They are currently included in councils’ housing programmes.