Shropshire: Hillfort campaigners slam council after planning bid

HOOOH has been leading 10 years of public opposition to housing development in the hillfort’s setting during Shropshire Council’s Local Plan making and several planning applications and revisions.

Campaigners say that the latest scheme, submitted by Cameron Homes, has hardly changed at all from plans refused last year, with 83 dwellings spread across the same incursive footprint within the hillfort’s eastern landscape.

“The proposals still conflict with heritage planning guidance and do not comply with SAMDev policy conditions for development on the OSW004 site allocation,” said a spokesman for HOOOH.

“But Shropshire planners are choosing to overlook policy details and seem to be done with the heritage argument.”

HOOOH says more than 60 per cent of the proposed development will be in full view of the hillfort, one of several significant negative impacts on the historic setting the ‘must be properly addressed under current planning guidance’.

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The spokesman said: “The planners are not listening as they should do to the opinion of hillfort experts and their assessment of this nationally important archaeological site.

“Back in 2014, 12 foremost academics of British Archaeology stated that development would substantially harm the hillfort’s setting.

 “They have also not listened to the statutory heritage consultee, Historic England, by ignoring an agreed ‘northern limit’ for development, designed to reduce the detrimental heritage impacts.

“Worse still, plans show a road spur in the north-eastern corner of the site which could signal potential for further town expansion into the hillfort’s landscape.

 “They are not listening to their own historic environment team, which has called for a full Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) ‘to ensure that the impacts on the setting, and thereby the significance, of the Scheduled Monument are fully assessed’. 

“And they are not listening to the public, who have submitted repeated objections and a 12,000-signature petition to oppose building on OSW004 during a decade of local planning consultations.”

HOOOH continues: “Heritage is being sidelined, and communities are being left heart-broken by a broken planning system and broken promises.”

English Heritage, the national guardian of the hillfort, has described Old Oswestry as ‘one of the greatest archaeological monuments of the nation’.

The group has also received support from both North Shropshire MP Helen Morgan and Oswestry Town Council.