We’d like to say a very big thank you to everybody who has provided responses to the Vale of White Horse District Council’s Local Plan consultations. For the past six months, the Council has been working through the comments you provided earlier this year. We listened to all of your opinions, and taking those into account along with legal advice and ‘critical friend’ comment from the planning inspectorate, we have made some significant changes to some of the sites and policies in the plan. Cherwell District Council recently had its Local Plan rejected by the planning inspector for not taking into account the full housing numbers arising from the SHMA earlier this year. This is a stark warning to us that whether we like them or not we cannot ignore the Oxfordshire SHMA figures. This Local Plan is the only way to get control of planning in the Vale again, to protect us from the unacceptable developer-led building that we’ve been exposed to for the past two years. So we’ve worked really hard to get into the position we are in now, where we strongly believe that the plan we have created is sound, and crucially that a planning inspector will agree. This is why the Council will be publishing the plan this November and asking you to comment. We will then submit your comments along with the plan to the secretary of state early next year. Because of the employment and housing growth in the Vale, the Council is managing to attract some significant investment in infrastructure to the district, like the major improvements to the A34 junction at Milton. There will be some good news coming up over the next few weeks about how the district will be doing everything possible to make sure the Vale gets all the infrastructure it needs to support this growth. The Council will also be explaining how we intend to make sure that all the houses and communities we’re being asked to build are of the best possible quality. You can sign up for updates direct from the Council by sending an email containing the word 'subscribe' to localplan@whitehorsedc.gov.uk