In a move which is certain to reignite the controversy over the proposed housing development in the shadow of the nationally important Old Oswestry Hill Fort in Shropshire, Shropshire County Council have put amended development guidelines out to consultation starting on 1 June 2015. Local campaigners from the Hands Off Old Oswestry Hill Fort [HOOOH] along with many organisations and experts from the archaeological world, including Lord Renfrew and Sir Barry Cunliffe, had hoped the site would be withdrawn from the council’s “Site Allocations and Management of Development (SAMDev) Plan”. However, the much delayed revised draft plan, which was initially expected to have been published well before the General Election, retains a proposal to develop 124 houses on the controversial site OSW004, just a few hundred meters from the scheduled site, in a position which, many experts argue, substantially damages the setting of the hill fort as well as the local environment.
See above for a view of the OSW004 housing site seen from Old Oswestry Hill Fort, which campaigners argue shows how the infill of housing would have a substantial and harmful effect on the views to and from the scheduled site.
An open letter signed by Lord Renfrew, Sir Barry Cunliffe and a roll call of senior academic experts, which was sent to the former Communities and Culture Ministers, Eric Pickles and Sajid Javid in December 2014, claimed the development would cause “irreparable harm” to the hill fort’s setting and concluded
“If the bar for acceptable development under the NPPF does not protect the setting of even our most significant heritage sites, then we set a potentially calamitous precedent for the greater part of the nation’s historic environment.”
As a result the campaigners are also angry and perplexed that the revised plan has apparently been agreed with Historic England, formerly English Heritage, subject to a series of conditions, including a full archaeological assessment, cosmetic landscaping and the preservation of certain views, which falls far short of what both local people and the independent experts consulted, either wanted or expected.
Read more at The Pipeline
http://thepipeline.info/blog/2015/05/30/old-oswestry-controversy-set-to-reignite/
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