A year in Oxfordshire, 2025

A growth corridor, a new stadium, a new branch line, a congestion charge, and partying seagulls. It’s been a busy year in Oxfordshire. Here are just a few of the highlights.

January

Growth, part one: Chancellor Rachel Reeves announced the formation of the Oxford–Cambridge Growth Corridor, very much a foreshadowing of the year to come. The engine behind this was to be a government-led Growth Commission to “review how best to tackle the barriers that are constraining development of new housing and infrastructure”.

Growth, part two: Culham, between Oxford and Didcot, was selected as Britain’s first “AI Growth Zone”. The Government said planning approval for data centres will be fast-tracked; access to the energy grid will be prioritised; and the site promoted for international investment. Working with the UK Atomic Energy Authority, the Government will “seek a private-sector partner who would develop one of the UK’s largest AI data centres, beginning with 100MW of capacity and with plans to scale up to 500MW”. They are currently still seeking said partner. (Have they tried Tinder?)

Growth, not quite: A block of flats in Quarry High Street, Headington, was deemed by a planning inspector to have grown a bit too high. He prescribed demolition.

Lab space latest: The new Oxpens development was approved with apartments, student flats, and lab space.

East West Rail: 5G mobile service was announced for the route from Bicester to Bletchley. Trains weren’t. Meanwhile, the Clarion scooped everyone by reporting early in January that Botley Road wasn’t going to reopen before June 2026. The rail minister duly trooped up to assure Oxford this wasn’t quite true, and that it would actually open in August 2026.

February

Oxfordshire County Council set its budget, and with elections due in May, everyone scrapped to see who could talk the most about potholes. Funds were allocated for two new special schools, £45m to rebuild Carterton College, major road building projects like the Watlington Relief Road… and £278m for potholes. Meanwhile, a medical supplies lorry ended up sideways after swerving into the verge on the heavily potholed road from Heyford Park to Ardley.

The City Council set its budget too. Most parties were in glorious agreement for most of it, promising funds to progress (among other things) affordable housing, the Cowley Branch Line, Templars Square regeneration, Covered Market upgrades, a more walkable city, and a city centre playground. Print these off and use them as a checklist as the year progresses.

Lab space latest: Plans were unveiled to redevelop the Ozone leisure facilities by the Kassam Stadium. They promised a “vibrant science and community cluster” with 500,000 sq ft of offices and lab space. Oxfordshire County Council bucked the trend by selling County Hall for redevelopment as a hotel.

East West Rail: A charter train for rail enthusiasts ran from Oxford to Bletchley, but no, there were no passenger trains. Still, Oxfordshire County Council did wave around a new report convincingly making the case for direct Oxford–Bristol trains.

March

Our Infrastructure Week series was, if we say so ourselves, kind of prescient. Oxfordshire is a boom county. Jobs abound. Houses do not. We started off by looking broadly at what is stopping building new homes in the county, and then looked at issues in turn; sewage, energy, water, and transport, the latter a guest post from LibDem MP for Didcot & Wantage, Olly Glover. In October, he was duly appointed LibDem frontbench spokesperson for transport. Get ahead, write for the Clarion.

Do you love talking about Oxford transport? 34 county residents got the chance to do exactly that in a Citizens’ Assembly, spending 45 hours deliberating over 11 sessions spread over 6 weeks. They overwhelmingly supported making the city centre car-free and turning some existing roads over to buses, cyclists and Blue Badge holders, together with improved support for Park and Ride. The county council Labour group had campaigned for the Assembly to be set up; it’s (we are choosing our words carefully here) not quite clear that the results were entirely what they wanted. Still, in a rare outbreak of cross-party unity:

Oxford East MP Anneliese Dodds resigned as Minister for International Development following cuts to the international aid budget. Pretty much everyone in the city that birthed Oxfam agreed with her.

Sh–t happens: Remember the Oxford Cambridge Growth Corridor? 25 developers and key investors in the project wrote to the Government to say Oxford was effectively uninvestable because a lack of investment in sewage treatment was blocking the ability to build homes. In other poo news, three men were convicted of stealing Blenheim Palace’s golden toilet.

Lab space latest: The High Court dismissed a legal challenge to the new Oxpens River Bridge. The pedestrian and cycle bridge will link new lab space at Oxpens with new lab space at Osney Mead.

East West Rail: Oxford–Milton Keynes trains appeared in draft timetables, with Government documents specifying “entry into service by September 2025”.

April

The £75m Blavatnik School of Government, designed by Swiss architects Herzog & de Meuron, was closed after an unexpected air strike by a hostile seagull. Events were rescheduled so that repairs could take place. A reader shared a video of the seagull, which promptly went viral with the Telegraph, BBC News and ITV News picking up the story.

Abingdon resident Duncan Bhaskaran Brown set a new world record for non-stop Morris dancing at over 11 hours. He began his feat at 5am on Saturday in the town’s market place, with the record being broken at about 4pm.

Climate emergency latest: West Oxfordshire District Council refused an application to build an electric vehicle charging station beside a roundabout on the A40 at Eynsham because “the proposal will be of an urban nature which will appear incongruous”. Readers are invited, in Basil Fawlty style, to suggest what they expected to see beside a roundabout on the A40 – the Hanging Gardens of Babylon? Herds of wildebeest sweeping majestically across the plain?

Lab space latest: HMV on Cornmarket closed so that the Clarendon Centre around it could be redeveloped as lab space. Meanwhile, Moderna’s new labs at Harwell received approval to produce mRNA vaccines.

East West Rail: Chiltern Railways ran test trains into Oxford. They didn’t carry passengers. In other train news, your Clarion scribe wrote an election primer whilst on the Eurostar to Brussels, and the wifi ate it.

May

May 1st saw not just May Morning celebrations, but also the County Council elections. A remarkably hard fought election saw the Liberal Democrats move from a LibDem/Green coalition to overall control of the council. We live-tweeted the election from Clarion HQ, marshalling a stream of tip-offs from contacts at the count, and it was fun. (Can we admit that?) Post-election, Damian Haywood wrote for us on “how to be a councillor”, Katherine Miles described the experience of coming a close second, and the Clarion uncovered that the Conservative/Independent tie-up would lead to a dead heat and two official oppositions, at a cost of £180,000.

Lab space latest: 64–65 Cornmarket, the HSBC building, was sold to the owners of the Clarendon Centre so it could be converted into lab space. We asked the Clarendon folks what their plans were. Their non-committal reply was so obviously written by ChatGPT that it hurt.

East West Rail: The Chinnor & Princes Risborough steam railway (annual revenue: £0.5m) opened a new length of track. East West Rail (total budget: £1bn) didn’t.

June

Around 1,000 people marched in the Oxford Pride parade. Political parties were banned wholesale from the parade, with the organisers saying: “We are witnessing a disturbing rollback in LGBTQIA+ rights, and trans people are bearing the brunt. This year, we stand with our trans community. We protest. We remember why Pride began.”

The government announced it wished to more than double the size of Campsfield House, the “immigration removal centre” near Kidlington/Oxford Airport it planned to reopen. A Phase 1 refurbishment programme was planned to see 160 beds installed, expanding to 400 with a new-build Phase 2. A statement said: “The IRC will hold a mixture of time-served foreign national offenders and immigration offenders while we prepare to remove them from the UK. Detained men will be held under immigration powers and will not be free to leave or access the local area.” Despite protests throughout the year, Campsfield reopened in December.

Congestion charge: The newly elected Oxfordshire County Council announced that, with traffic filters temporarily off the menu while Botley Road remained closed, it was considering a congestion charge for Oxford. People had views. Meanwhile, we asked what the difference was between “a grassroots campaign group” and “one guy with a Twitter account and time on his hands”.

Lab space latest: Oxford City Council announced it was planning to increase the charge levied on new R&D buildings by 410%. Would this dampen down the appetite for new lab space? (Spoiler: no.)

East West Rail: Freight trains began running over the line. Passenger trains didn’t. Rumours reaching the Clarion said that opening to Milton Keynes might be pushed back to December. Meanwhile, the Government announced £2.5bn funding to extend trains to Cambridge. The phrase “run before you can walk” springs to mind.

July

Not another consultation! With seemingly every decision from the removal of a couple of parking spaces to wholesale changes to the way we light our streets requiring a consultation and much railing about consultations on the dreaded Nextdoor, we wrote about consultations and how they work, possibly more out of sheer frustration.

We got geeky about the proposed mega-reservoir near Abingdon, welcoming guest writer Cllr Andy Cooke, who disagreed with the conclusion we made in our Infrastructure Week series. Eloquently (and in great detail), he wrote about the challenges he saw in building Europe's biggest reservoir in a swamp with untested technology. Start here. In other news, Thames Water announced a hosepipe ban.

The government announced its Strategic Defence Review. Our policy eyes frequently turn eastwards of late, and if yours do too, consider reading our article on what the review means for the county, and what might happen if the situation escalates (spoiler: not many jokes in this one).

Lab space latest: Revised plans went on show for more lab space at the Ozone.

East West Rail: Bicester residents were up in arms at the prospect of losing car access at the London Road level crossing once East West Rail services ramped up. East West Rail services showed no signs of ramping up.

August

Oxford held a Rally for Ukraine to mark Ukraine's 34th Independence Day – their third since the full-scale invasion, and their 11th since the Russian invasion of Crimea. Speakers included 9-year old Timofei from Odesa, who said he liked the people of Oxford and the food, but he missed his home. Oxfordshire has welcomed 2,800 Ukrainian refugees (though some have since returned home) out of 254,000 in the UK.

J.D. Vance came to Charlbury on holiday. This is roughly like Jeremy Corbyn holidaying in Clacton-on-Sea or Ronald Reagan taking a summer break in Cuba. Local resident Jonathan Mazower wrote for us from inside Fortress Dean. In other “hasn’t quite researched his target market” news, Nigel Farage, leader of the 7th largest party in Oxfordshire, chose Kidlington Airport as the venue to announce his latest policy on migrants.

Oxford United FC got the green light for their new stadium after much debate and surely one of the most watched planning committee meetings Cherwell District Council has ever held. As we finish this article on 30 December, we are still disappointed that planning officer Laura Bell didn’t receive at least an OBE in the New Year’s Honours.

Lab space latest: A £3m gift from American businessman Stephen Schwarzman was announced for the restoration of the Radcliffe Observatory, surely Oxford’s original lab space.

East West Rail: We wrote a long read imploring the powers-that-be to build housing near stations, and stations near housing. We unaccountably omitted the bit that said “and run some trains to them”.

September

Sometimes it’s best to let the pictures do the talking. Here’s Extinction Rebellion Oxford staging a protest against developing Scotland's Rosebank oilfield.

And here’s Raymond Blanc contemplating retirement, as his destination restaurant Le Manoir aux Quat’ Saisons in Great Milton announced it would close for redevelopment. He said he remained “deeply committed to guiding and nurturing the spirit of Le Manoir”, which will reopen in summer 2027.

Demonstrators faced each other outside a hotel used to house asylum seekers in Oxford. Pro immigration protesters numbered around 100 and bore placards saying ‘Hope not Hate’, ‘Everyone is welcome here’ and ‘The only minority destroying the country are billionaires.’ Around 35 anti-immigration protesters waved St. George’s and Union flags, and held a minute’s silence for US activist Charlie Kirk.

Children took to the streets of Oxford once more in Cyclox's Kidical Mass.

And St. Giles' Fair brought thrills, spills, lights and excitement to the city centre for its annual visit.

Climate emergency latest: West Oxfordshire District Council refused planning permission for a solar farm that could have powered “all the households in Witney” because it might catch fire, which fossil fuels, of course, never do. Our coverage went spectacularly viral on social media. (So too did our report on adult “entertainer” Bonnie Blue visiting Oxford, purely due to Oxfordshire County Council’s deadpan response: “Having taken the risk of googling Bonnie Blue’s Bang Bus, the vehicle appears to be a van. It therefore wouldn’t be exempt from the normal [High Street] restrictions.”)

Lab space latest: Network Rail issued a tender for redeveloping Oxford station, seeking a design which would include not just trains, platforms, rails, and bad coffee, but also “offices and life sciences”, aka lab space. Meanwhile, Magdalen College School submitted plans for their new science building on Iffley Road. Junior lab space!

East West Rail: In a Clarion exclusive, we reported exactly why trains to Milton Keynes hadn’t started yet – an industrial dispute about running without guards.

October

Good train news! East West Rail might be doing that thing where the departure board just says “Delayed”, but in October, the long campaigned-for Cowley Branch Line was approved. (We were amused to see that literally everyone tried to take credit for it going ahead. Ah! Politics.)

Oxford University announced the finding of a sauropod dinosaur trackway 220m in length, the longest in Europe, at Dewar's Farm Quarry near Bicester. ‘Oxfordshire's dinosaur highway’ has already yielded hundreds of footprints, including from the carnivore Megalosaurus. The extraordinary fossil site dates to the Middle Jurassic, 166 myr ago. The fossil that started it all, the Megalosaurus jaw from Stonesfield, is on display at Oxford’s Natural History Museum.

Cheese news: We wrote about local government reorganisation again with some frankly tenuous cheese metaphors. Oxfordshire’s politicos were alternating between promoting their favoured cheese-slicing strategy and writing angry letters to planning inspectors, as South & Vale councils joined Oxford in having their Local Plan rejected for failing the “duty to co-operate”. We’re starting a sideline in relationship counselling for local authorities.

Not to be outdone by its district council making overtures to West Berkshire, Kennington twinned itself with Musanda, Kenya. Residents hope that seeing the twinning signs will remind everyone that flags can be used to celebrate or to exclude, and symbolise friendship not fear.

A delegation of Shuar leaders, elders, students and professors from Ecuador concluded their tour of UK museums with a well-attended special public event at the Oxford University Museum of Natural History. Researchers from the Pitt Rivers Museum also shared the work of Proyecto Tsantsa, a partnership between the museum & institutions in Ecuador that seeks to incorporate the Shuar's perspectives & expertise into the study and treatment of their cultural artefacts, including tsantsas, or shrunken heads.

Congestion charge: It started on 29 October. Everyone was very happy and it has hardly been mentioned since.

Climate emergency latest: West Oxfordshire District Council once again refused permission for an electric vehicle charging station on the A40 at Eynsham. The refusal stated that it would “give rise to harm to the character and appearance of the area and setting of Eynsham”, unlike the picturesque BP petrol station on the other side of the road.

Lab space latest: Oxford University opened its new Life & Mind building on the corner of South Parks Road and St Cross Road. Over 1,400 scientists, academics and postgraduates will be based at the building. It replaces the Tinbergen building, closed in 2017 after asbestos was found. Meanwhile, Larry Ellison annexed another 180,000 sq m of Littlemore for his technology campus.

East West Rail: Chiltern Railways quietly removed the statement that “we are confident that trains will be running this year” from their website.

November

Police arrested 20 people protesting in Oxford against the government’s proscription of Palestine Action as a terrorist organisation. The protests were part of a day of action in what Defend our Juries described as “the most widespread civil disobedience campaign in modern British history”.

Pretty fly for a tip: The colossal illegal waste dump at Kidlington hit the national headlines. We clambered over the fences (before the site was sealed, we hasten to add) to photograph the greatest environmental crime in Oxfordshire for many years.

Buy one, get one free: We doubled our publication frequency, sending out Clarion newsletters on Tuesdays as well as Fridays. Pros: less time editing stories to within an inch of their life to hit the 4,000-word limit; more space for jokes. Cons: more space for jokes.

Feline the need for light relief after all this serious news? We wrote an article on College Cats of Oxford and amusingly, far, far more of you shared it than any of our other, rather more serious articles.

Lab space latest: A new Quantum Cluster was launched at Harwell Campus. The cluster aims to encourage quantum businesses, organisations and entrepreneurs to work closer together, accelerating innovation & commercialisation. It will create over 1000 jobs and entangle over £1bn of investment. (The Cluster will be like particles brought together to increase their energy levels. The results will, of course, be uncertain until observed.) It was a bumper month for lab space, with new projects at Wootton, Kidlington, and Oxford Science Park, and a new university-led partnership to encourage more of it.

East West Rail: After the delays were picked up by national media, Chiltern Railways issued a statement saying “we understand this will be disappointing to people looking forward to using the new route”, which moves them onto the third of the five stages of railway grief (denial, anger, disappointment, resignation, Delay Repay).

December

After a rash of shiny new university buildings opened in the year, many of you asked us to take a look at the billionaires that funded them. So we went right back to the beginning, lifting the lid on the philanthropists like Cardinal Wolsey that started the University, and followed it up with a look at modern day donors.

In an accidental quirk of publication timing we think embodies the inequality in Oxford, a long read from Oxford Mutual Aid looked at the hidden food emergency in Oxford.

An absolute glut of new stores and cafes opened in Oxford city centre just in time for Christmas: Pop Mart on Cornmarket, gelato cafe Amorino a few doors down, a new home for the Vaults & Garden, Rin Cha Thai on Broad Street, the Santander Work Cafe at Carfax, a coffee booth outside St Michael’s, and a pharmacy off Gloucester Green. Undeterred, posters on Nextdoor fervently insisted the city was a “ghost town”.

The death of former Oxfordshire County Council leader Ian Hudspeth was announced – someone who did more than most to shape today’s Oxfordshire. We looked at his life and legacy.

Lab space latest: The Crown Estate issued a tender for structural modifications to 1–12 Magdalen Street, the former Debenhams set to become lab space. The former Albion pub on Hollybush Row got permission to become lab space. And in an achingly literal attempt to show no stone was left unturned in the search for more, a revived bid was announced for lab space in a former quarry in Faringdon.

East West Rail: What do you think?

Happy New Year

Thank you to all our readers for following along this year. We’ll be back with the same mix of news, politics, events, culture and occasional snark, twice a week in your inbox, and as it happens on Bluesky and Twitter. See you on the first train to Milton Keynes!