Battle lines are being drawn over plans to build 1,000 homes on Green Belt land near Oxford United's Kassam Stadium.
A major housing scheme on a site south of Grenoble Road in Greater Leys will be the most hotly-contested proposal in the draft county structure plan, to be published on September 26.
Oxford Preservation Trust has already begun rallying opposition to a plan that it says would clear the way for the destruction of the city's Green Belt. The trust has written to parish councils and pledged to work with the Campaign for the Protection of Rural England, Oxford Green Belt Network and South Oxfordshire District Council to ensure the scheme is dropped.
The county structure plan is the planning blueprint for growth in the county until 2016. Following the publication of the draft plan there will be a six-week consultation period ending on November 7. Oxfordshire county councillors agreed in June to amend the plan, after the Conservative county councillor Charles Shouler successfully urged County Hall to back the urban extension of Oxford beyond the ring road, to spare Bicester extra development.
Debbie Dance, secretary of the preservation trust, accused the county council of adding the Grenoble Road proposal "at the last minute" without proper consultation. She said: "Oxford's Green Belt, in place since the 1950s, has worked. It has protected the openness of our countryside around Oxford, and has allowed our villages and towns to retain their rural character, with development outside their envelopes carefully controlled."
Mrs Dance, who lives in the Baldons south of the proposed development, said: "What is now being put forward will fundamentally alter this. Developers, long awaiting this chance, have been taking options and buying land speculatively throughout the Green Belt. The danger is that people will take the view that a small piece of land away from themselves is not a problem. This is not the case. Once one site in the Green Belt is allowed, then the precedent will be set and further development will inevitably follow. People in Kidlington and the north side of the city may feel pleased that the threat to them has been removed from the plan. Yet before they know it, Kidlington will be part of Oxford."
The site being lined up for development stretches from Greater Leys to Oxford Science Park. The idea has been warmly welcomed by Oxford City Council, as a means to combat the city's housing shortage, and Magdalen College, which owns most of the land. Supporters of the scheme say the site contains a sewage works, overhead cables and an electricity sub-station.
The draft structure plan will also include another controversial housing scheme in Grove, with proposals for 2,100 homes to be built on the village's former airfield.