Homes England has withdawn its outline application P20/S2134/O for a 3,000 unit housing led development at Chalgrove Airfield. The council’s notice says “no futher action will be taken on this application”.
The outline planning application for the development of Chalgrove Airfield is being withdrawn to allow an amended application to be submitted to take account of comments from the Civil Aviation Authority’s Airfield Advisory Team.
This reflects Homes England’s commitment to safeguarding Martin Baker’s operations at Chalgrove. The site is allocated in the South Oxfordshire Local Plan 2035, and the importance of creating a new diverse, connected and active community at Chalgrove to urgently meet the considerable housing shortfall and deliver significant investment for the area remains unchanged.
Objections include the Civil Aviation Authority which has recommended development is discontinued. The CAA says the whole of the airfield is used by Martin-Baker Aircraft Company Limited with little or no spare capacity.
Publication of the CAA’s technical appraisal on the council’s website is dated 19th May 2021 and withdrawal of the application was on 21st May.
It is clear the application is undeliverable from the CAA letter. They need to retain an existing runway because of prevailing winds and protect an exclusion zone for ejector seats and detector equipment. Howhere near 3,000 units is acheivable.
Homes England have been warned again and again this is simply a bad site, accessible down a country lane with no transit connections. Another site will now have to be found for the South Oxfordshire Local Plan. I have long advocated a land swap deal to relocate the business aviation activities from Oxford Airport here freeing up that site.
I should note that the Nimby Administration in South Oxfordshire included in their local plan, even though t was Carbon hogging, because of a dogmatic application of ‘brownfield first’ which shows that when push comes to shove they were just Nimbys not Greens.
Decisions, Decisions, Decisions 
Ex-Second World War airfield sites are dwindling, in the face of the brownfield-first approach and housing need (and solar panels!) However, flat sites for airfield use are a finite resource in many areas, and once developed, cannot be replaced. When/how are the strategic/national implications of developing yet more airfield sites considered?