Berinsfield Garden Village

These pages have been put together by South Oxfordshire District Council to keep residents of Berinsfield up to speed with what’s going on in their village, and to let them know when and how they can get involved.

New Berinsfield Community Delivery Plan

Read our Berinsfield Community Delivery Plan

To implement our vision for the transformation of Berinsfield into a thriving Garden Village with improved facilities that are developed in line with the community’s needs and aspirations, we recently developed a Berinsfield Community Delivery Plan. South Oxfordshire District Council’s delivery of the plan is overseen by the Berinsfield Garden Village Steering Group, chaired by Cllr Robin Bennett.

We produce a regular newsletter to keep you up to date on what’s happening in and around the garden village. If you’d like to sign up and receive the newsletter or find out more about the exciting projects planned for the town – register for updates by pressing the button below:

Garden Village Masterplan

Developers Ptarmigan are in the process of creating a Berinsfield Garden Village masterplan and held a Community Planning Weekend at the end of March 2023, including workshops and an exhibition to help design a comprehensive masterplan for the Mount Farm site and the existing village of Berinsfield. Following the exercise, Ptarmigan presented their vision to the community at Berinsfield Community Association on Tuesday 18 April 2023.

Following the report back of the Vision the Ptarmigan Team will continue working with stakeholders and the community to bring together a comprehensive masterplan framework document followed by an outline planning application for the site.

You can follow Ptarmigan’s progress, see their Vision and get updates on their masterplan by visiting their Berinsfield Garden Village site.

Map of existing housing in Berinsfield with concept plan added. — **Berinsfield concept plan**

Above is a plan shows the existing village with yellow and orange zones where we think around 1,700 new homes could be built in the village and it gives you an example of what the new layout may look like.

Green areas around the development area will be used as new open spaces and the green arrows are the green link paths that people will be able to use to get around the new development.

Community Facilities Project

You may have noticed some new faces in the village lately. This is because we’re conducting a study to look at all the community buildings and spaces in the village and how they’re being used for community activities to help support work to regenerate Berinsfield.

Staff from a local company called Oxford Architects are meeting with people from the charities, organisations and groups that use or own buildings and spaces in Berinsfield to find out how they use them now and what more they think they’ll need in the future. They will gather this information to help build upon comments we’ve received in the past from residents and groups across the village.

These new findings will help us to look at how new or renovated community buildings and spaces could be designed so that charities, organisations and groups in the village can continue to offer services that residents want and need in the future.

If you’re from a community group or organisation that operate in Berinsfield and would like to comment on current and future use of community facilities, please email us: BerinsfieldGV@southandvale.gov.uk

Community Energy Project

The Low Carbon Hub (LCH) have concluded the Berinsfield community energy feasibility study, commissioned by us. Three technically viable options for large scale renewables were identified in Berinsfield for possible further investigation:

Roof mounted solar PV panels: From satellite images, LCH identified several large commercial roofs in the Vogue Business Park in the North East corner of Berinsfield, which could be ideal locations for roof mounted panels.
Ground mounted solar PV arrays: LCH investigated four parcels of agricultural land to the south of the existing village and the proposed development, due to their proximity to the electricity sub-station which would allow a low-cost connection to the grid. Unfortunately, three of them have flooding or landownership issues but could be investigated further.
Water source heat-pumps: Queenford Lakes could be large enough to provide heating and hot water for the new housing development and the existing village, using water source heat exchangers.

The Council will be exploring these options, including securing external funding over the coming months.

The next steps

A wide range of organisations are working together right now to help push forward and bring some genuine community-led village improvements to Berinsfield in the near future.

Years of hard work from the community, the district and parish councils and other partners also mean the building blocks are in place for longer term investment and improvements.

At the district council, we have confirmed a range of commitments specifically to Berinsfield in our Corporate Plan and we successfully secured ‘Garden Village’ status from the government. The housing site at Berinsfield has also been confirmed in the adopted Local Plan, meaning housing developer investment in the community is assured.

Berinsfield Garden Village

In June 2019, Berinsfield was awarded garden village status. This means the government will provide us with extra funding to help plan for new open spaces, high-quality housing, new employment opportunities and community facilities for Berinsfield residents and the wider community.