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From This is Oxfordshire 18/11/2003
Stars back gravel battle
by Ian Townsend
Raquel from TV comedy Only Fools and Horses is helping a group of Oxfordshire villages campaign against plans to extract gravel.
Actress Tessa Peake-Jones and her actor husband Douglas Hodge have recorded the voice-overs on a new 15-minute protest video being sent to politicians and broadcasters.
It has been made for the protest group Page - Parishes Against Gravel Extraction - in a bid to get Oxfordshire County Council to drop the proposal from the draft version of the County Structure Plan.
Mr Hodge, who has just completed filming a new series of Redcap, in which he plays a Military Police Sergeant Major, said: "We were only too delighted to help.
"We live in the area affected and can see how devastating gravel extraction would be.
"We live here because of the privacy and the beauty of the area and both of us believe this would rip the heart out of local communities."
The county has proposed land in the Benson, Stadhampton and Chalgrove areas as its first choice for new gravel pits.
If the Page campaign succeeds, the second choice of land round Wallingford and Moulsford could be considered. Wallingford Town Council is backing Page - and preparing to run its own campaign on the issue if necessary. Ms Peake-Jones and Mr Hodge, who live near Wallingford, are joined in the voice-overs by South Oxfordshire District Council leader Ann Ducker and experts who have conducted surveys of the area's importance for archaeology, ecology and the landscape.
Dr John Howell, chairman of Page, said: "We appreciate that many county councillors may not be able to visit the area, and wading through our 200-page document could be daunting, so through our film we have brought the area to them."
Something is not right. This message is just to keep things from messing up down the road