Public consultations into the development of an entirely new town with a population of 15,000 in South Oxfordshire have been pushed back.
Leaflets were erroneously delivered to some residents last week inviting views on plans to deliver the 6,500 home development outside of the green belt.
A month-long public consultation period was scheduled to begin on Monday.
The three public exhibitions planned over the next few weeks have all now been cancelled and information taken down from the Harrington settlement website.
The leaflets were recalled soon after they were posted, to allow the developers more time before the consultation launch.
The leaflet outlined proposals for the ambitious Harrington New Settlement, near Junction 7 of the M40, between Tetsworth, Milton Common and Great Haseley.
Developers want to transform the fields there into 6,500 homes, bringing a population of around 15,000 people.
Schools, health and wellbeing facilities, shops, restaurants and cafes would all be built on the site.
Harrington is proposed by a partnership between house builder Bellway Homes and Oxfordshire-based Pye Homes.
A spokesperson for the Harrington New Settlement development team said: “Last week, due to a set of unforeseen circumstances, we decided to postpone the public consultation on our proposals for Harrington.
“Unfortunately, since this time, Royal Mail has been unable to recall all of the leaflets, meaning that a handful have been delivered to residents across South Oxfordshire.”
In December, the partners launched a ‘vision document’ based on “three powerful drivers”: the Oxford to Cambridge Knowledge Arc, the protection of Oxfordshire’s natural and built heritage, and a model for a compact, enterprising, self-sufficient new settlement.
Charlotte Woods, of the Harrington New Settlement development team, said: “South Oxfordshire has an identified need for thousands of new homes, but the allocations in the Local Plan as they stand steer development on marginally viable, highly-constrained sites in the green belt. The proposed sites are not prepared for the way residents will live and work in 2035.”
Many comments on South Oxfordshire District Council’s Local Plan were in favour of the development at Harrington with comments including it would be well planned and that it could remove the threat to the SODC green belt.
SODC were contacted for comment.
Article originally appeared on Oxfordshire Guardian
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