We fully support the statement at paragraph 16, which recognises that the Oxfordshire Plan offers an

opportunity to assess the overall Oxford Green Belt strategy.

The new and emerging Local Plans in Oxfordshire have proposed some Green Belt land releases to

accommodate development, but the approach has generally been to release just enough land to get

through to the end of the relevant Plan period. The Oxfordshire Plan, with its far longer time horizon,

affords the opportunity to take a more pragmatic and comprehensive view of the available options for

delivering sustainable development.

Where sustainable locations have been identified for development, and the principal constraint is the

Green Belt, we believe that very careful consideration should be given to whether the land in question

performs so strongly against the purposes of the Green Belt, that development should be pushed to

other, less sustainable locations.