Plans for new town on former US air base revealed

The plans include 6,000 new homes

Plans to build a new town on the site of a former cold war airfield have been revealed by developers.

Dorchester Living wants to build 6,000 homes, along with leisure and employment spaces, on the site at the former RAF Upper Heyford air base near Bicester.

Under the plans, the new town could become one of Oxfordshire's largest settlements - with roughly 18,000 people potentially living there.

But local campaigners have criticised the pressure that the development would put on local infrastructure.

When asked why the town was needed, Dorchester Living CEO Paul Silver told the BBC there were not enough new houses being built.

He said: "Older people are living longer, they're not releasing their housing stock, so younger people aren't able to get housing and onto the housing ladder."

RAF Upper Heyford is about 5 miles (8km) from Bicester

RAF Upper Heyford was used by the US Air Force during the Cold War, and was home to nuclear missiles before it was closed in the mid-1990s.

At its peak in the 1980s, around 18,000 American airmen were based at the site.

Campaigner Martin Lipson, who is chair of the Mid Cherwell Neighbourhood Plan Forum, said his "major concern" was about traffic.

"This obviously represents quite a nightmare for rural communities that are concerned about increasing in traffic and particularly in goods traffic with heavy goods vehicles navigating these little lanes," he said.

Mr Lipson, who is opposed to the plan, also criticised the proposals plan to build on greenfield land.

The base was used by the US Airforce during the cold war

Callum Miller, the Lib Dem MP for Bicester and Woodstock, said the proposals raised "lots of questions about how it would be supported" and "about the infrastructure that would come with it".

He said that "too many" communities had been "blighted by a complete failure to get the right infrastructure in place before things open".

Cherwell District Council, which will be the planning authority responsible for making a decision on the proposals, said it had not yet received an application for planning permission.

The council did highlight its 2015 local plan, which featured a new settlement on the airfield site.

Under the proposals, a park comparable in size to New York's Central Park would be built around the 1.8 mile (3km) runway in the heart of the new town

Addressing Mr Lipson's concerns over traffic, Mr Silver said: "It's up for us to come up with proposals to mitigate the transport impact of development - and one of the things we do is internalize jobs and living in the same place."

He said there had also been 3,000 jobs already created at the site, and there was a plan to create a new renewable technology park.

"This is not just a housing development, this is creating a forward looking development for Oxford," he added.

Callum Miller is the MP for Bicester and Woodstock