Public Meeting - Friday 17th July

Many thanks to everyone who attended the public meeting in Longueville Hall. We had about 90 in the room including from Buckinghamshire Council our two ward councillors, Jilly Jordan and Caroline Cornell, plus Deputy Leader and Cabinet Member for Transport Thomas Broom.

Subjects covered over the two hours or so included the latest on the East West Rail train maintenance depot, the draft Buckinghamshire Local Plan and the two pre-application consultations (Pond Close and Richborough, close to the Stoke Road/Drayton Road/Newton Road in Stoke Hammond parish).

One important take-away from this meeting was how important it is going to be for as many people as possible to respond to the Local Plan Regulation 19 consultation which is due to open up on Thursday 23rd. More on this will follow, including a leaflet on how residents can submit their views.

We obviously won’t have time to run a repeat when we have the monthly Parish Council meeting on Monday (20/07/2026), but if you missed the public meeting (or did attend and want to see the follow-up) then please consider joining us at the Free Church at 7pm.

PublicMtg 2026 07 17

DRAFT BUCKINGHAMSHIRE LOCAL PLAN: NOW 660 HOUSES NOT 424 IN NEWTON LONGVILLE, AS WELL AS A 20 PITCH TRAVELLERS SITE ...

DLP 1 We'd been told that the draft Buckinghamshire Council Local Plan was going to be published on Wednesday 15 June but with a report on progress with the draft being on the agenda for a Buckinghamshire Council Growth, Infrastructure & Housing Select Committee meeting this Friday (10/07/2026), the plan and supporting documentation have gone online as part of the committee papers for that session.

We became aware that the papers were available late yesterday (06/07/2026) and are still working through the detail, but we already know that Buckinghamshire Council are proposing to take forward all four of the original Newton Longville housing sites referred to in the consultation exercise in Feb/Mar, but with modifications including an increase in the housing capacity for each, and have added a fifth site (the Leys House off Whaddon Road, adjacent to Weasel Lane). The result for Newton Longville if this were to go through would now be 660 houses rather than the 424 (+56%) we thought we were facing four months ago.

On top of the above, the housing capacities for the proposed three (large) sites in Stoke Hammond and Whaddon have been increased from 4,122 to 6,285 (+52%). In addition, it looks like Buckinghamshire Council may be planning to take forward the Beachampton NESS (New and Expanding Settlements) site with a further 3,200 houses. If we include the 1,855 dwellings already being constructed for the Salden Place development, this potentially means circa 12,000 new properties in this top, north east corner of Buckinghamshire.

There is an opportunity to raise a question (and speak) at the Buckinghamshire Council meeting on Friday, and we submitted the following before the midday deadline today:

TRAIN MAINTENANCE DEPOT (TMD) - June 2026

EWR have provided further information on the layout options for the proposed train maintenance depot west of Whaddon Road, straddling Newton Longville and Mursley parishes. The most significant changes are arguably the addition of a third option (the 'Bow-Tie'), major increases in the estimated volume of excavated material that would need to be removed from the site, and the demolition and rebuilding of bridge OXD06 on Whaddon Road (Newton Longville) for layout options 2 and 3. EWR have also noted that they expect the majority of trains entering or leaving the depot to be coming from or going in the Cambridge direction (which favours option 2).