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Clarion Weekend, 10 July 2026

Clarion Weekend, 10 July 2026
Photo by Roger Close

Pour a cold drink, settle down for some calming (or maybe not) reading. We have a world record, CCTV coverage at the Plain (or not), new ways to repair potholes, family days out by bus in Oxfordshire and a cracking set of events in this incredible county of ours.

This week’s long reads

An Oxford theologian recently set a world record on the Cyr wheel, spinning non-stop for four hours. We speak to Ariel Dempsey to find out about her adventures on the wheel of steel and how the local community is “a source of joy and encouragement”.

Spinning around
Oxford is a city of wheels – the cars and bicycle wheels of William Morris, the mill wheels of the Thames and Cherwell that powered the medieval town. But it has never before seen wheels like Ariel Dempsey’s. Ariel Dempsey is an exponent of the Cyr wheel, an acrobatic, gyroscopic
Oxford ClarionOxford Clarion

This week’s top stories

Almost all the visible illegal waste has been removed from the Kidlington fly-tip. The track matting for removal lorries and the sandbag wall protecting the River Cherwell have now been removed. The site boundaries are being cleared by hand to avoid damaging tree roots.

Excavator looking for buried waste (photo via Environment Agency)

More than 700 lorry loads of waste were removed from the site. Now that the site is largely cleared, the Environment Agency is digging trial pits to look for buried waste – the blackened excavations above. Reinstatement work will then take place.

An Oxford classics graduate has won cross-party endorsements in the upcoming Clacton by-election. Count Binface, who studied at Corpus Christi, was described as “maybe the people[’s candidate]” by Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch, while defence secretary Dan Jarvis said “good luck to him”.

His manifesto pledges include capping the cost of a croissant at £1 (25% of the going rate in Jericho) and making Thames Water bosses swim in the Thames. Other declared candidates include Laurence Fox (star of Oxford TV detective series Lewis), plus a former commodities trader and crypto promoter.

Around the city

  • The number of companies paying the Oxford Living Wage, a voluntary minimum wage significantly above the statutory rate, has hit 200. Oxford City Council’s Cllr Mark Lygo called it “an amazing milestone… Oxford is an expensive place to live, and this is one of the best ways to help ease this”. The Oxford Living Wage is set at £14.06 per hour compared to the national rate of £12.71, meaning an employee will earn £2,600 more over the course of a year. New sign-ups include Oxford Nanopore Technologies, the Royal Oxford Hotel and Asylum Welcome. We wrote about the Oxford Living Wage earlier this year.
  • Three council-owned older persons’ homes in Oxford will get an assessment of heating systems thanks to a £50,000 government grant. The aim is to identify opportunities to improve efficiency, support long term reliability, reduce emissions and ensure compliance with upcoming heat network regulations. Albert House (Central Oxford), Bradlands (Marston) and Cardinal House (Littlemore) will received the technical assessments. Following completion of the studies, the Council may be able to apply for further funding towards the cost of recommended improvement works.
  • “It’s as bad as we feared.” A Freedom of Information request on behalf of Save Our Museum has found that since the introduction of entry fees to the Museum of Oxford, footfall is down 70-80% on 2024-25. Income is 61% lower than the council's projections so far, or over £53,000 less. The figures are based on February to late May data. Campaign group Save our Museum said: “It's as bad as we feared. It was clearly a terrible idea to introduce entry fees to a small people’s history museum in a city dominated by world-famous, free university museums. Visitor numbers have dropped off a cliff, with income a fraction of projections. We hope these figures will be a wake-up call and the Council will move swiftly to cancel entry fees for locals so we can all access this gem of a museum again.” Their petition is here.
  • Layla Moran MP has said she is ‘staggered’ by the lack of CCTV coverage in the city centre. The MP raised concerns after her bike was stolen on Friday night; she discovered on following up that CCTV in and around the Plain, St Clement’s and Cowley Road had been non-operational for 18 months. The Plain roundabout has had serious safety incidents in the past, including a death in 2023 which prompted a peak-hour lorry loading ban.
         She has written to the police and the City Council requesting the status of Oxford CCTV cameras, and that they set out plans to improve the CCTV network. Oxford is consistently ranked as one of the worst cities for bike crime in the UK, coming second last year with 6.7 thefts per 1000 people annually. But it also has a poor record of solving these crimes, with just 4.3% of cases resulting in a positive outcome in the last 3 years.
         Moran commented: “Having my bicycle stolen was gutting, but sadly it is an experience that is shared all too often by residents in Oxford. What is worse is that nothing can be done in so many of these cases because of a lack of CCTV. I will continue to work with local leaders to improve CCTV coverage, especially in areas known to have problems with cycle theft, as well as building more secure cycle lockups in the city.”
  • Campaign group Friends of the Fields (Iffley) is calling on city councillors to take the Iffley Horse Fields out of the Local Plan, the blueprint for development in the city, when it comes in front of the full council on 13 July. They were granted a judicial review and stay of execution after claiming procedural irregularities in the way the site was added to the plan. Spokesperson Evelyn Sanderson said: “This site is not able to promise a minimum number of homes. Instead, the meadow can meet other pressing needs as a site for education in nature – to improve the health and well-being, learning and skills of young people, many of whom have little access to nature.”
  • Oxford-based ‘impact investing platform’ Ethex says its investors have saved almost a million tonnes of CO2. Based on Cowley Road since launch in 2013, Ethex has raised £135m from 27,000 investors, and lent £168m, saving a potential 983,000 tonnes of CO2. Ethex raises money from everyday investors and connects them to community-led and climate-focused projects, many in deprived areas. In 2024/25, it funded 23 projects with £16.3m: 11 in renewable energy, 6 in affordable finance, and others in housing, food, health and community. Co-CEO Lisa Ashford said: "The real credit belongs to the organisations doing this work and to the investors backing them. Our role is to make those connections possible.”
  • Henley Royal Regatta last week saw Oxford rowers setting new course records. A women’s eight from the Headington School won the Prince Philip Challenge with a time of 7:05; a combined Oxford Brookes and Leander men’s eight won the Grand Challenge with a time of 5:59.
  • A volunteer board has been appointed for the Government-funded ‘Pride in Place’ programme for the Leys. 16 local people will draw up a 10-year plan to allocate £20m of funding for the area.
  • East Oxford favourite (i.e. notoriously hard to get a table at) Oli's Thai is launching a collaboration with BMAN Brewery Taproom this Saturday. The riverside brewery features food popups alongside its local beer. (The Clarion has been to BMAN and predicts long queues for this one. Go early, thank us later.)
  • And finally: In PR dressed up as news, upmarket stationers Baddeley Brothers say Oxford is Britain’s fifth most polite city with 347 searches per 100,000 people for ‘thank you’ card-related terms. They've clearly not been on Nextdoor. Or Facebook.

Father Clive Dytor at the Fox in Middle Barton.

Around the county

  • Flags latest: The High Court has awarded a permanent injunction in favour of Oxfordshire County Council to prevent unauthorised placement of flags on or near the public highway. This follows Raise the Colours’ Oxfordshire organisers undertaking not to place flags in the county, or abuse council workers taking them down. OCC says it will act against those that breach the order, including seeking costs in bringing any claims. It also says it may seek to recover its legal costs for bringing this action, having previously issued multiple warnings to the four named defendants.
  • A long-closed village pub has been blessed by the local Catholic priest in advance of its reopening. Father Clive Dytor, parish priest for Chipping Norton and Charlbury, visited the Fox in Middle Barton which is due to reopen on Saturday 18 July. Closed in 2023, it has been acquired by businessman Tony O’Sullivan. Father Clive was awarded the Military Cross in the Falklands War after leading his Royal Marines unit in an assault on an Argentine machine gun position; he became an Anglican priest and a public school headmaster before converting to Catholicism.
  • Almost 100 new electric vehicle public charging points are being planned by Oxfordshire County Council. Replacing on-street parking spaces, they are “aimed at providing charging locations for the 30% of residents without a driveway or off-street parking”. They include eight sites in Oxford, plus Deddington, Kidlington, Berinsfield, Henley, Shrivenham, Bampton, Burford, Carterton, Eynsham and Witney. OCC says more sites will be announced in the future. Consultation is open until 7 August.
  • The Office of National Statistics report on 2025's baby names is out. We're pleased to report that there were 12 baby Florences born in South Oxfordshire last year, though we don't know if this should be ascribed to the popularity of Florence Pugh or Florence Park.
  • Oxford University Hospitals has reduced its carbon emissions by over 20% over the past 3 years, a reduction it attributes to investing in solar panels, better food waste collection, less business travel, and switching from piped anaesthetic gas to portable cylinders. The NHS Trust also credits everyday changes in how staff travel & work, including 5,500 fewer business journeys leading to 215,000 fewer car miles, with many meetings moving online. We've previously reported on their carbon savings from switching to dry powder inhalers.

Shores Green as it is now, and Eynsham P&R as it will be.

  • The new slip-roads at Shores Green, on the A40 outside Witney, will open on Friday 17 July, providing an alternative to the congested Bridge Street for Witney motorists. Separately, work gets underway next Monday (13 July) on connecting the Eynsham Park & Ride to the A40, with temporary traffic lights in operation throughout the summer. (The £25m cost for two slip-roads at Shores Green is more than the average capital spend each year on cycling and walking across the whole of Oxfordshire: we looked at highways spending in our 2025 OCC budget analysis.)
  • Thames Valley Police is no longer rated ‘inadequate’ in any areas, but it needs to improve its response to non-emergency calls – particularly domestic abuse – according to its latest inspection. Inspectors said it must get better at identifying and safeguarding high-risk abuse victims.
         The Inspectorate also concluded TVP should plan and progress crime investigations more effectively. It found that many TVP investigators were not fully qualified, particularly around rape and serious sexual offences: “We found many officers struggling to manage their investigative workloads.” There was particular concern about offenders who skip court or prison recalls. “We reviewed several cases and found that all lacked effective action. Many offenders who were wanted on recall had committed serious crimes, and they continued to pose a risk while still at large.”
         Deputy Chief Constable Ben Snuggs said: “I am encouraged to see recognition of our strong neighbourhood policing work. We are focused on strengthening the quality and consistency of our investigations, and enhancing how we identify and safeguard vulnerable people.” Police & Crime Commissioner Matthew Barber noted: “It is important to recognise the significant financial pressures facing forces. Prioritising investment in one area can inevitably limit resources available elsewhere.”
  • The contractors who fix Oxfordshire’s roads say they are “excited” by new pothole repair methods that could be applied during the winter months, when previously it has been difficult to carry out lasting repairs. Oxfordshire County Council recently trialled 15 different fixes on a Banbury road. M Group’s Richard Lovewell told Highways magazine: “It's the cold mix that is the most exciting. Everybody in the country suffered with 40 days of continuous rain. If we can find a cost-effective, durable, cold lay product that we could use in an extended wet period then that is far more efficient.” The trials followed a 2023 exercise which were used to select the four methods currently in use. The new methods will be tested over the next two years.
  • Check your defib: South Central Ambulance Service (SCAS) is urging those responsible for publicly accessible defibrillators to ensure they're functional, after June's heatwave led to a 118% increase in 999 emergency call takers sending members of the public to a defibrillator for someone in suspected cardiac arrest. David Hamer, SCAS, said: “This surge of defibrillator deployment shows how vital the work of defibrillator guardians is, so please check your defib today. If any guardians are unsure what to do, or how to replace old pads or batteries, then get in touch with our team via defib@scas.nhs.uk. Please also check that your defibrillator is registered on the Circuit – it only takes five minutes and if it’s not registered, our emergency call takers won’t know it’s there if a cardiac emergency happens nearby."
A dozen people gather round a botanist gesturing at a flower in a meadow.
Photo: Community Action Groups Oxfordshire
  • Oxfordshire is pushing back on climate anxiety, according to a report from a volunteer umbrella group. In its Annual Report for 2025/2026, Oxfordshire's Community Action Groups (CAG) Network tallied the efforts of the county's residents mucking in to build a more sustainable, resilient future. The report covers the 127 member groups that are taking action on issues such as waste, transport, food, energy, biodiversity and social justice. This includes over 16,000 volunteers grafting 87,000 hours between them in the 12 months ending March 2026. In the Garden Tree Giveaway, for example, CAG member groups distributed 7,500 trees and hedgerow packs to individuals to plant in their gardens and community places. And Wild Oxfordshire ran a variety of training programmes including a wildflower-spotting session in St Mary's Fields in Kidlington (pictured). 
  • There are no Oxfordshire towns on the shortlist for the UK Town of Culture. The government published its shortlist today, which includes Grimsby, Basildon, Great Yarmouth, and the Isle of Bute (not technically a town…?). We reviewed Oxfordshire entries earlier this week.

Cycling and walking

  • Oxford Travel Options has published 'Family days out by bus in Oxfordshire' to help families prepare for fare-free bus travel for kids throughout August. Oxford Travel Options was created by Low Carbon Oxford North and the Zero Carbon Oxfordshire Partnership (ZCOP), and is funded by ZCOP, the Low Carbon Hub, and the Foundation for Integrated Transport. The fare-free scheme for kids is part of Chancellor Rachel Reeves' "Great British Summer Savings".
  • Police are appealing for witnesses following a road traffic collision involving a motorist and a cyclist in Radley on Tuesday, on National Cycle Network route 5. A woman in her 30s has been hospitalised with serious but not life-threatening injuries.
  • Family bike ride: Cycle campaigners & organisers of Kidical Mass bike rides, Cyclox, are organising a free fun family cycle ride to the Leys Festival on Saturday. The ride starts at Rosehill Primary School at 10.30, goes via John Henry Newman Academy at 11.00 and Windale Primary School at 11.30am, arriving at 12.00. Cyclox say all are welcome, though children must be accompanied by an adult. Cyclox has recently been offering free bike repairs at local schools using funding from the Community Outreach Active Travel fund.
    Cyclox will also have free bike fixing at the festival itself.

This weekend

  • The Leys Festival (free), Sat, Blackbird Leys Park. On the theme 'One People One Place', all sorts of entertainment from baking to beanbags and bubbles. As mentioned above, a Kidical Mass ride will pick up at Rose Hill and Littlemore for a mass ride at midday.
  • Didcot Festival of Cultures (free), Sat, Cornerstone Arts Centre. Including an African drumming workshop, performances from the Military Wives Choir, and Folk Dances Remixed, a 'unique mix of maypole, clogging and ceilidh with... house, breakdance and bhangra'.
  • Sounds of the City (£), from Sat, Museum of Oxford. Memorabilia from Oxford's 1990s music scene with accompanying Spotify playlist.
  • Oxford Indie Book Fair (free), Sun, Magdalen College School. Hedgehogs, Picasso, and Radley Large Wood in the first of this year's two fairs.
  • Rainbow of Ribbons (free/£donation), Sun, University Parks. Sobell House Hospice unveil this year's memorial tree, on display until the end of August.

This week

Oxfordshire’s independent media

Notes from Clarion HQ

Stay cool, drink water, wear sunscreen, share the Clarion. See you on Tuesday.

Photo by Roger Close (who thinks we need some trees in Radcliffe Square?)