This is the video of a talk given to the Daventry Constituency Labour Party on 18th May 2022.

Here is the Q&A session following the talk

A talk given to the Climate Action Group, West Northants on 1st December 2021

'Alternatives to the Ox-Cam Arc' is an expert meeting that will provide different views on housing, transport, agriculture, the environment and democracy across the Arc.

Distinguished guest speakers including MPs and sector experts, and Q & A sessions will challenge the developer-led agenda of Whitehall's Ox-Cam Arc proposals, following our response to the recent Government Arc Spatial Framework consultation which involved an alternative survey revealing that 93% of people would vote 'No' to the Ox-Cam Arc and only 4% would vote 'Yes' (the remainder are undecided).

'Alternatives to the Ox-Cam Arc' is being organised by Stop the Arc (STARC), Buckinghamshire Environment Action Group (BEAG), Bedford For a Re Consultation (BFARe) and Cambridge Approaches (CA), with the support of our participating speakers and organisations.

The ticket price of £20 includes tea/coffee and a sandwich lunch.

Ticket booking is now open to all and tickets are going quickly (seating is limited to only 50). Please book early to avoid disappointment.

Please note that the original venue for our meeting (DoubleTree Hotel, MK Stadium) has now become unavailable to us for our meeting, so we have had to change venue to the MK Conferencing Centre, Strudwick Drive, Milton Keynes, MK6 2TG, about 5kms away from the stadium. For venue details please go to: http://mkconferencing.co.uk/

Below is the timetable of the day’s events, speakers and topics

Residents and Councillors talk about the effects of the A6 M1 link road and the associated rail freight interchange. Nick Burton of Stop the Arc says this is part of the wider Ox-Cam Arc scheme. (2:54 mins)

This is an article by BBC TV East reporter Ben Schofield who interviewed local residents, business-people, the Mayor of St Neots, Stephen Ferguson, and Green Party activist, Lara Davenport-Ray about the Ox-Cam Arc Consultation which was closing that day, Tuesday 12th October. The residents hadn't heard of it, the Mayor found the consultation totally lacking in detail (the background documentation 'impenetrable'), the business spokesperson worried that developments would become just huge housing estates and Lara Davenport Ray stated that St Neots would be overwhelmed by Ox-Cam Arc plans. (3:40 mins)

This is a talk given to the Federation of Cambridge Residents' Associations special meeting on 'Supersize Cambridge' on 7th October 2021. Stop the Arc's David Rogers asks 'The Ox-Cam Arc: what are they not telling us?' (21:34 mins)

A full list of all the recorded talks at this meeting is available on the FeCRA website here.

A talk by David Rogers of Stop the Arc Group to the WI Climate Action Group on 1st October 2021 (14 mins)

A short video of Stop the Arc's 'Parliamentary Pavement Protest' on 07/09/21. Covid and other restrictions kept us from meeting MPs within Parliament so we held our event on the pavement outside Portcullis House with the London traffic in the background! Speakers include Richard Fuller (Cons. NE Beds), Greg Smith (Cons. Buckingham), Layla Moran (Lib. Dem, Oxford West & Abingdon) and Anneliese Dodds (Lab. Oxford East). Thanks to all the MPs who juggled their timetables to join us on the Embankment, and to Cllr Tim Bearder who made the video.

This is a BBC TV News article following the launch of the public consultation on the Ox-Cam Arc Spatial Framework. Campaigners are concerned that the consultation questions are so bland and lacking in any detail that the Government might take positive responses as an endorsement for its high growth ambitions for the five counties of the Ox-Cam Arc. How can people respond to this consultation sensibly when absolutely no details of the scale of development have been given to them?

A Westminster Hall debate on 14th July saw housing Minister Chris Pincher responding to a number of local MPs across the Ox-Cam Arc expressing their concerns at the high growth targets for their communities as a result of Arc plans. David Rogers for the Stop the Arc Group welcomes the fact that MPs are finally taking notice of the threat of over-development in many essentially rural constituencies. The recent Amersham & Chesham by-election result is a wake-up call to all those who imagine local communities are happy with Whitehall plans for growth.

This talk, given to the Greater Marston Labour group on 21st June 2021, covers five key features of Ox-Cam Arc plans; houses, roads, the economy, the environment and democracy. Arc ambitions involve over-development of the five Arc countries; road corridors ‘only to meet existing needs’ (despite the fact that the plans involve hundreds of thousands of new houses); economic arguments that do not stand up to close scrutiny; use of biodiversity net gain approaches that fail twice as often as they succeed; and a total lack of consultation with the 3.7 million people who currently live in the Arc. In its present form,. the Ox-Cam Arc should be scrapped.

The controversial Oxford-Cambridge Expressway was cancelled in March but the Government retains its original ambition to increase economic output of the Oxford to Cambridge region by an amount that requires more than one million workers and an aspirational one million houses, with Cambridgeshire’s share (271,000) increasing by more than 80% the entire housing stock of the county by 2050.  Key documents released in February of this year outline a framework spatial plan for the Ox-Cam Arc and a regional transport strategy to improve both road and rail connections across the region.  Plans imagine ‘doubling nature’ in places by 2050, but this will only come at the cost of losing other areas to development.  Do we really have to sell nature to save it?  Biodiversity Net Gain and Natural Capital Accounting methods are poor and inaccurate defences; they are like bows and arrows against the tanks of the development industry. (44:14 mins) 

The talk itself is available here (click on the image). A longer version with the Q&A session following the talk, is now available in the News section of our website here

For more information about the Oxford-Cambridge Arc plans please visit the Stop the Arc website here.