A HOUSING estate in Bampton could be built over a six-year period if a planning condition is removed by West Oxfordshire District Council.

The council’s lowlands area planning sub-committee will consider an application by developer Richborough Estates to remove the clause that meant 160 homes would be built in phases by 2023. It would see 60 homes built by 2017, 50 by 2019 and another 50 by 2023.

But the developer wants to be able to build 30 homes a year. If permission is granted at Monday’s meeting, the development off New Road could begin next year and be completed by 2021.

Planning officers have recommended the condition, imposed when planning consent was granted in March, should be removed, saying there would be no further harm created than would already be expected.

But Lesley Campbell, of the Save Bampton’s Future campaign, called for the condition to remain.

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She said: “It’s an important condition in terms of the village’s sustainability because we can’t take 160 houses in five years.”

Mrs Campbell said the largest estate ever built in the village included about 59 homes at Calais Dene in the late 1980s.

She said: “It’s taken more than 20 years to integrate that number of people into the village.

“When people move into a village it takes a while to get on your feet.

“They gradually start joining clubs or the library and finding out what’s happening in the village.

“But it’s more difficult with a big estate where people move in at the same time.”

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