Dear [Forename]

Where Has All The Money Gone?
Apologies for the delay but our AGM will (finally) take place on 22 June 2023 at 7.30pm in Wantage Methodist Church, Newbury Street OX12 8DA. As last year, the meeting will be a combination of a physical meeting and a zoom meeting, although it will be much harder to join in the discussion via zoom. If you want to watch the proceedings remotely the zoom link is
https://us06web.zoom.us/j/83839158203?pwd=a1VLTWx0SFAxOTdSZjRDaXNGTW1jQT09
or Meeting ID: 838 3915 8203, Passcode: 809060
Also if there are any votes in our (very short) AGM you won't be able to vote if you are a remote attendee (via Zoom).

The theme of the discussion this year is "What are developer contributions and how are they spent?"
You may be wondering, where all the promised schools, roads, hospitals, leisure facilities etc, collectively referred to by the snappy title of “infrastructure” are?
Before any bricks are laid, local planning authorities and developers agree to millions of pounds worth of infrastructure needed to serve the growing population but that seems to be the point at which things get tricky…
You may be curious, or furious, or possibly both – if you would like to find out more, and maybe contribute to the debate, you will be welcome to come along to our meeting. We’d love to see you there.

On the subject of infrastructure, if you read the Herald you may have seen that the District Council intends to dispose of West Brook Play Area in Grove. Grove Parish Council has been maintaining this area for many years and we are told that the notice in the Herald is part of the statutory process of changing the ownership from the District Council to Grove Parish Council.

You may also have seen that the application to build an Anaerobic Digester near Cow Lane between Grove and Hanney was withdrawn just before it went to the Planning Committee with a recommendation to refuse permission. I'm sure this is due in part to the activity of the community in creating robust opposition to the application.

The revised outline planning permission for Crab Hill was approved by the Planning Committee at the Vale of White Horse District Council recently. This was revised for several reasons, mainly because the original permission (granted in 2015) requires all detailed applications for the new homes etc. to be submitted by 13 July this year and the developers say that it’s not feasible to do this, but also to allow them to squeeze 34 more homes into the existing space. To read more about this see our column in the Herald tomorrow or read it on our website at https://wantageandgrove.org/column.php?id=324

Also you can read earlier columns from the Herald at https://wantageandgrove.org/columns.php or previous newsletters at https://wantageandgrove.org/newsletters.php and find a list of many of the sports, cultural and community organisations in OX12 at https://wantageandgrove.org/organisations.php

Finally don't forget that Botley Road will close for at least 6 months from 11th April, leaving only pedestrian and cycle access to the centre of Oxford from the west. For other roadworks (including all the traffic lights around Wantage at the moment) see https://one.network/

Thanks for reading.

Best wishes
Julie

Julie Mabberley
Campaign Manager

Wantage and Grove Campaign Group
www.wantageandgrove.org

https://www.facebook.com/groups/wantageandgrovecampaigngroup