Iconic UK RAF base being ‘swallowed up’ by expansion

Brize Norton, famous for housing the largest RAF base in the UK, has a significant elderly population who have made the traditional Cotswold stone cottages, home.

But the community, which was just 938 15 years ago, is set to more than treble from its current population of 2,590 with developers snapping up the green fields around it.

Villagers fear it is set to vanish forever under latest proposals for a ‘new town’ featuring 2,700 homes around its iconic base.

This is in addition to further schemes for more than 3,000 homes that is feared will change the area “beyond recognition”.

Kate Grant, 66, who moved to Brize Norton when she was just three, is appalled at the proposals after already watching the area transform with building sites.

Local resident Kate Grant. (Image: Tom Wren / SWNS)

She said: “This for me is home and the idea of being surrounded by all the new houses is appalling to me.

“My biggest worry is the infrastructure. I have heard from people who have moved into the new houses that they were promised all these things but nothing ever got built or done.

“We won’t be a village anymore.”

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Ms Grant said multiple businesses had already closed and more will struggle with a large influx of people, especially on the small country roads.

Ms Grant said: “We used to have shops, a bakery, and three pubs.

“The roads just can’t manage and now we have got great big JCBs going down them.

“I go to a lot of village meetings and they come up with all these lovely, pretty pictures but they don’t answer the specific questions.

“Like the fact that we have got a substation which floods every time it rains. It can’t cope.

A new town with 2,700 homes is being planned around RAF Brize Norton’s base. (Image: Tom Wren / SWNS)

“So the road network, the flooding and the vast number of houses, it is just crazy.

“I think people feel that it is a done deal and there is nothing they can do about it.”

Brize Norton is also home to an elderly population and locals claim healthcare services are strained as more and more houses are being built, with Ms Grand saying “doctors can’t cope”.

Developer KSW is now looking at 280 hectares of undeveloped agricultural land between Brize Norton and the A40 in a new area called New Astrop.

Draft plans would include an old people’s home equipped with 120 bedrooms and a new country park.

Developers have also proposed around 12 hectares of employment land and a relief road to the village.

Talks are now taking place with West Oxfordshire District Council officials over a scoping report but the latest proposal joins a growing list of major housing projects for Brize Norton, Carterton and the surrounding area.

Developers are pressing ahead with writing a formal planning application for 2,500 homes on land off Burford Road, also in Brize Norton.

Other schemes include the approved 350-home Kilkenny Farm development and a 265-home military housing scheme.

The draft plans come after Brize Meadows, a housing development of nearly 800 homes, was built recently.

Local resident Rob Phair. (Image: Tom Wren / SWNS)

General view of RAF Brize Norton. (Image: Tom Wren / SWNS)

Rob Phair, a 46-year-old aircraft engineer, whose home will overlook New Astrop, said the village is no longer a community, but miles of housing estates.

He said: “What we want doesn’t matter, it is going to happen. We have got no choice. It is coming.

“I think for the village, it is just a housing estate. It is not a community anymore. It is not a village anymore, it is just houses.”

Mr Phair said the area experienced flooding and a strain on their sewage system after Brize Meadows was built.

He said: “In 2020, I remember coming back in December and the field was just underwater permanently, bog roll jobbies floating around in the field.

“Whenever it rains now you get Thames Water tankers taking the sewage away. It is ridiculous.

“Now they are going to put more and more houses on top of that.

“When they built Brize Meadows they said they were going to build a school, a community fire station, a dentist and a doctors surgery. The houses are there but none of that has appeared.”

Local resident Alice Green. (Image: Tom Wren / SWNS)

Alice Green, 83, said: “Further down the village, they can’t use their washing machines, or anything when we have heavy rain.

“They have got to do the infrastructure first before they build any more houses because it is just crazy.”

Other residents fear for their children’s wellbeing as Brize Norton Primary School faces relocation and expansion.

Jodie Hughes, 37, said: “My children go to Brize school and that is changing. We are not happy about the change.

“All of the children that go to this little village school are moving to Brize Meadows school.

“The kids are comfortable now and it will all be different for them, more people, more children, it is a lot.”

Local resident Jodie Hughes. (Image: Tom Wren / SWNS)

Ms Hughes, who works as a carer, added that she is concerned about the local wildlife if the fields are built on.

She said: “One of the biggest concerns is the wildlife, the muntjac deer have got nowhere to go, the squirrels have got nowhere to go.

“All of the fields have been built up on.

“At the moment it is nice to look out of the kid’s windows and see fields and eventually we are just going to see houses and houses.

“We just got a puppy and the more houses they build the less areas there are for dog walks as well.”