Save Our Sandhills

You may have signed the petition opposing the development of Bayswater Farm Field - by 14/02/25 there have been 1,015 amazing responses! A big thank you to each person for supporting the Sandhills community!

We are asking all petition signatories to consider donating a small sum each to enable the Parish Council to seek legal advice to support our case. All donated money will be transferred to the Parish Council bank account who will pay the barrister directly.

Can you give £5 or £10 please?

The Parish Council are working with the community. They are taking a lead in opposing this development, and are registered as a party the public inquiry. This needs at least an expert witness statement from a legal professional to support the opposition.

However, the Parish Council do not have any budget for this, they are currently looking at their finances to see what can be done. The quoted work for legal advice is £4,500.00 to be paid upfront. Please will you join the Sandhills community in fundraising, so that we can partner with the Parish Council to take the opposition forward to the public hearings in a way that can be listened to?

Working together, we can achieve so much more.

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Here is a Reminder:

Residents and stakeholders of Sandhills, Oxford, and the surrounding area, strongly oppose the appeal for the proposed housing development and care home near Sandhills (OX3 8ED). This appeal disregards critical legal, environmental, and safety concerns, as well as the community's well-being and the sustainability of the site. The current planning appeal hearing underway is looking specifically at the access.

We are urging the Planning Inspectorate to uphold the decision to reject this development because the development lacks legal access to the site, requiring use of a bridleway on unregistered land. One issue that may still prevent the developer gaining access to BFF is a technical issue of subsoil rights of the owners of properties adjacent to the turning circles on Burdell and Delbush Avenues. There is legal precedence that permission to disturb the subsoil needs to be granted by the respective owners otherwise the developer would be committing legal trespass. The complication in this case is: as the land in question has been adopted by Highways, and the crossing of the bridleway and joining up to roads on the development site is Highways work, are the subsoil rights effectively overruled?

Sadly, it seems that Highways are working to help overcome the obstacles to planning permission being given.

But ... the Inspector has received the petition that has such tremendous support - thank you for signing and supporting the Sandhills community! Now, proper legal advice is needed to support the concerns about subsoil rights, and prevent access being given through Sandhills.

Please help the campaign to Save Our Sandhills.