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A bitter feud has emerged over a "secret" initiative to build a Milton-Keynes-style city in the Cotswolds. Joe Harris, the Cotswolds District Council Lid Dem leader, has lambasted
the idea of building 23,000 new homes between the sleepy town of Cirencester and the village of Kemble. A leaked document showing that Gloucestershire County Council had been developing a
long-term growth vision for the county since 2020. The council earmarked areas in the world-renowned beauty spot suitable for "significant development". The council document
floated the idea of building several garden towns that would hold 142,000 homes across Gloucestershire by the year 2051. Of those 142,000 properties, 36,000 would pop up in the Cotswolds.
One of the newly designed towns would be built by the village of Kemble and would link Cirencester to its railway station. Mr Harris expressed profound reservations and raised questions
about the viability of the proposals. "These plans are staggering to say the least. It would create a new city like Milton Keynes in the Cotswolds. Doubling the number of dwellings in
our district isn't a sustainable solution to the housing crisis; it's simply unworkable and would lack community support," he said. "The Cotswolds are world-renowned as a
special place to visit and developing new affordable homes is already hard as eighty percent of our district is in the Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB). As a result most of the
development in our area is already falling on Cirencester and Moreton-in-Marsh which are just outside of the AONB." "Our approach should prioritise developing brown-field sites and
smaller-scale developments that offer genuinely affordable housing while preserving our area’s distinctive character," he continued. Harris highlighted existing strains on essential
services, adding: "Our roads, sewage network, and healthcare services are already stretched thinly. Implementing these proposals would only exacerbate these challenges, turning the
Cotswolds into a construction site for the foreseeable future. "These plans were concocted behind closed doors with little regard for transparency or genuine community engagement."