Green Belt - letter to Oxford Mail

12.50.53pm GMT Fri 4th Nov 2005

I would wish to comment on your article on the way that the County Council voted in respect of future housing allocations (Oxford Mail 2nd of November). I would start by pointing out that Councillors of all persuasions agreed that the public consultation exercise associated with it had been rushed, partial and hugely incomplete. Very few residents in my Division received any official consultation literature at all, and my Division was far from being alone. The results of the consultations exercise were also in my opinion much distorted by an active write-in campaign based in the Didcot area. If the consultation had been carried out by a reputable polling organisation such as MORI, then we might have had some faith in the results.

In my case my vote (and I did not abstain at any point) was guided by the views of my residents. In recent months I have surveyed some hundreds of my residents via a residents' survey. They showed that by 99 to 1 they were totally opposed to any house building in the Green Belt. That links to another point not made clear in your article. The named votes you featured were only taken after a vote in principle on the Green Belt issue. The Councillors voted by a large majority that they were opposed in principle to house building in the Green Belt. After that it was only the distribution which remained to be decided, and my vote is recorded. My view and that of my residents is that any breach of the Green Belt would be a green light for an orgy of speculative development which would completely destroy the priceless nature of the countryside around Oxford.

Cllr Bob Johnston

Liberal Democrat County Councillor for Kennington and Radley