WaGCG : Wantage and Grove Campaign Group
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Some 7,000 houses are in the pipeline for Wantage, Grove and the surrounding villages. More may soon follow as the Council is working on the plan to 2041.
Government guidelines say that development should be "sustainable". We do not think it is sustainable to put thousands of houses where medical facilities are increasingly inadequate, schools are at capacity, there is little employment in the area, and roads to where there is employment are unsuited to commuting.
We came together to campaign for a better deal for our area. As it says in our Aims:
We are not against any development in Wantage and Grove but:
After waiting for more than 3 years for a new leisure strategy, there were new Consultations on a Playing Pitch
Strategy and a Leisure Facilities Strategy for the Vale earlier in 2024.
You can access the consultations and the supporting documents here
Vale Leisure Strategies Consultation
There also is a presentation which was
given to the councillors at both Wantage Town Council and Grove Parish Council which makes a little bit more sense of
the leisure strategy but only covers these two parishes.
Very few of the sports clubs in OX12 were consulted as part of the strategy development and the district council seem to be oblivious to the needs of this area.
There have also been some minor improvements to the Wantage Leisure Centre in 2024 with refurbishment of the Sports Hall floor and freshly painted walls. There are also plans to refurbish the swimming pool changing rooms at some point.
Wantage Neighbourhood Plan was first drafted in 2014/15,
with the help of the Campaign Group but was rejected by a planning inspector in 2016.
The Town Council has been working on it ever since but it is still not finalised.
Water Resources South East (WRSE) and Thames Water have now published the revised plans that they have submitted to DEFRA. They have ignored all comments to the consultations and increased the size of the South East Strategic Reservoir Option (SESRO) aka OX12 Mega-Reservoir back to 150 million cubic metres of water. They have also removed the Severn / Thames Transfer from their plans. For details see our Abingdon Reservoir page.
To see the draft map of the new reservoir see this page from the Thames Water Reservoir - Technical Report.
We have been concerned for sometime that there is no "One Stop Shop" for Sports, Cultural and Community Organisations within OX12 (Wantage, Grove and the surrounding area) and decided that it was about time we did something about it.
We know that there are many organisations missing from this list and so if you have contact details for any of the organisers of other clubs, societies etc, or wish us to add your organisation to the list, please let us know.
There has been talk for almost 20 years about the possibility of re-instating the Station in Grove. We have summarised the issues that need to be resolved for that to happen here.
Keep informed
For the most up-to-date information please see our newsletters and our Facebook page [opens in a new tab]