HOMEOWNERS fear a town’s infrastructure will not be able to cope, with the prospect of hundreds of new houses soon being built.

Construction of 502 homes and a primary school on the land north of A4130 Wallingford Bypass could start soon if permission for the access roads to the site is approved.

Planning permission to build this estate, developed by Berkeley, was given in November 2019.

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The town will grow larger if the hybrid planning application for another hundred homes gets approval.

The development by Avant Homes includes a new access road off the A4074, public open space and the provision of school land at Newnham Manor, Crowmarsh Gifford, near the Berkeley estate.

The target decision date for its approval is March 31.

With so many new homes being built in Wallingford, additional traffic, vehicle emissions and the town’s infrastructure - like GPs and the sewage system - are among the neighbours’ concerns.

Homeowner Ashley Cox said: “The local infrastructure cannot cope with the additional population increase.

“The sewers are literally at bursting point with raw sewage often leaking into people gardens from the overflow. The local schools are already at capacity with no plans of how the new children will be educated. The doctor’s surgery is also struggling to cope with demand.”

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Michelle Reynolds worries about the dangers an increase in traffic could bring as children use those roads to go to school.

She added: “I am very concerned about the junction on the A4074 and the impact on Cox’s Lane which is already extremely difficult to turn right out of during peak hours.

“It seems inconceivable that further housing development within the Wallingford catchment can even be contemplated given that the services (like the doctors) are so grossly stretched to capacity.”

Councillor Katherine Keats-Rohan agrees with the people’s concerns and highlighted that this is a problem that Wallingford people share with many others living in Oxfordshire.

She said: “The homes will be built on land allocated for housing in the town’s neighbourhood development plan. These are green spaces, and nobody wants to keep losing them.

“The big problem isn’t much the housing itself. It is that we don’t get adequate infrastructure going alongside it.

“Here in Wallingford the sewerage and the water mains are the biggest issues, but the medical practice is straining at the seams. The town’s Victorian drainage sewerage system is in constant need of repair, or it’s blocked.

“Some villages don’t have facilities, like child support or children centres. An all of a sudden, they get another 3,000 houses, it is something ridiculous.”

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