The Appeal has been dismissed. The grounds given were that the scheme would fall outside the settlement boundary of Grove and the harm to the landscape and countryside would significantly outweigh the benefits of the additional housing provision. The appeal decision letter is available here.

The developers asked for advice from the District Council prior to submitting their application and received the following advice:

• The site is not allocated in the development plan for development and for planning policy purposes lies in open countryside outside the built-up area of a settlement.
• There are no exceptional circumstances set out in any other development plan policies to justify the development.
• It is unclear in how the site achieves the walk times of 15 minutes suggested to access existing facilities in Grove which is required to demonstrate the development is in an accessible location.

We don't need more development as the infrastructure of the OX12 area is already heavily overloaded. These 300 homes will only make things worse.

Grove Parish Council objected to the application. They have resolved to oppose any application on the East side of the A338 as they believe that this is too far from the infrastucture in the village to be sustainable.

See our Wantage and Grove Map for detailed locations.