The Forum is the place for your views on issues that affect Longworth. Right now there's one
major issue that concerns all of us - the proposal by Hanson plc to develop a sandpit in land lying
immediately to the west of Pine Woods Road. As other issues and topics come up, this Forum will expand
to cover them. If you have any input on this subject or suggestions for other Forum topics, please contact us.
LAND not SAND: A Brief History
Land not Sand is a group of Longworth and Hinton residents established in 2004 to
fight the plans by Hanson to extract sand from a 70 acre site bounded by Pine Woods
Road and the A420.
A formal application was submitted to Oxfordshire County Council in October 2007,
at which time Land not Sand rapidly mobilised local residents to register their objections. By the deadline for objections in November 2007, Oxfordshire County Council had received a hundred individual letters, in addition to detailed formal objections presented by both Longworth and Hinton Parish Councils, as well as from Land not Sand.
Concern focused on the increased risk of accidents resulting from slow-moving lorries
turning both across and into potentially fast-moving traffic, whilst entering and
leaving the proposed site from the A420.
Fortunately this concern has been shared by OCC's Highways Department, who subsequently
submitted holding objections against the traffic proposals on the grounds that they
did not meet the standards set by the Department for Transport. Hanson responded
by coming back with a revised set of proposals for the A420 junction, and it is these
which are the current focus of our campaign.
LAND not SAND Update, 4 July 2009
Our campaign of objection to Hanson's revised plan for changes to the Pine Woods Road/A420 junction (see 1 May update for details) has had a major impact, with Oxfordshire County Council having received in excess of 40 letters of objection from Longworth and Hinton residents.
The date for the OCC Planning Committee Meeting at which Hanson's submission is to be discussed has since been postponed again, and is now unlikely to be held before September.
LnS members are standing by to make a series of presentations detailing our objections to the proposal at this meeting, but we also need the support from all those who are likely to be affected by the development - residents of Longworth, Hinton, Southmoor/Kingston Bagpuize and Buckland - by attending in person.
So please look out for further announcements once the exact date of the Committee Meeting is known. These will include transport arrangements to make attendance as easy as possible.
LAND not SAND Update, 1 May 2009
Proposals by Hanson for the Pine Woods Road/A420 Junction
Following our objections to their original proposal for changes to the Pine Woods Road/A420 junction, Hanson has now come back with a revised plan.
They originally proposed a complete ban on all right turns out of Pine Woods Road; this would have meant detours of over a mile for motorists going to Southmoor, Charney, and points south, as well as considerably increased traffic going through Hinton towards Faringdon.
Hanson's new proposal involves blocking off with cross-hatchings one eastbound lane of the A420 from the start of the dual carriageway at the Faringdon end right up to the Pine Woods junction, and imposing a 50mph speed limit along this section, whilst banning their exiting lorries from making right turns out of Pine Woods Road. A raft of road signs is proposed to enforce this.
There is a whole series of arguments against this dangerous proposal. To name a few:
- This section of road is the first opportunity to overtake slow traffic for 7 miles; to reduce its capacity and speed goes against the original purpose of the Southmoor by-pass, and will only add to motorists' existing delays and frustrations.
- The lost opportunity for slower traffic to be passed and therefore for gaps to form will make it that much harder to turn right out of Pine Woods across the eastbound lane.
- This also applies to traffic wishing to turn into Pine Woods from the east or from the Charney roundabout.
- The proposed unusual road layout and accompanying intimidating signage is confusing to drivers and will cause accidents.
- Despite reduction to one lane, heavily laden lorries emerging from Pine Woods and turning left will have difficulty not obtruding into it, obstructing faster traffic.
- It is unlikely that a 50mph limit will be observed on what is demonstrably a fast dualled road, with the opposite carriageway being delimited.
All this for 60 lorries a day (30 in each direction) against a traffic flow of over 6000 a day.
The map illustrating the proposal is currently displayed on the Parish Noticeboard.
This proposal is now out for public consultation; we have until 14 May to object to Oxfordshire County Council. LnS needs your support: please send your objection letters to OCC before this date:
Taufiq Islam,
Planning Officer,
Oxfordshire County Council,
Speedwell House,
Speedwell Street,
Oxford OX1 1NE
Mohammad.Islam@oxfordshire.gov.uk
Land not Sand Update, September 2009
135 people from Longworth and Hinton turned up at Longworth Village Hall on 3rd August to view Hanson’s latest plans for the A420/Pine Woods junction, which bears striking witness to the concern locally felt at the proposals. However, the new plans gave no comfort to the many who had dutifully and lawfully registered objections to the earlier version sent out by the OCC in April; instead they raised even more concerns about safety. The latest plans still envisaging closing one lane of the eastbound dual carriageway up to Pine Woods Road, now make that single lane stretch even more hazardous by putting a raised kerb on each side. This makes that half-mile of road inaccessible to emergency vehicles - ambulance, fire, police and breakdown - which would need to get past queued vehicles in order to reach an accident or breakdown within that stretch. These might as well be trapped in a tunnel.
This is of course in addition to the already identified impedance to crossing and joining traffic under normal circumstances against an unbroken stream of single-lane traffic, which has been amply identified in earlier objections and by many individual representations.
Nor are these problems confined to residents of Longworth and Hinton; this junction is a well-used crossroads. Any interruption to its free traffic flow will impact villages east and south as far as Charney Basset and Buckland, with knock-on effects even further.
We have now been presented by the OCC with several possible solutions from Hanson, proposing road alterations to accommodate the passage of 40 heavy quarry vehicles a day for the next ten years. Despite numerous and continued objections that the proposal is unsafe, from both local residents and those who regularly use this stretch of the A420, the OCC and Hanson still appear to persist in the contention that lane closure is a viable and safe option. It would seem that objections, despite being argued and re-argued in repeated consultations, are being wilfully disregarded, since no specific rational counters to them have been received.
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