Clarion Weekly, 1 August 2025

Welcome! Holiday season is well underway, and unlike (ahem) some media outlets, we refuse to pad for length because we don’t have advertisers to worry about. But we do have small children clamouring while we write, who are just as demanding. Read on for bridge news, expanding villages and Jemima Puddle-Duck.

This week's top stories

Legal delays to the Oxpens Bridge for cyclists and walkers have led to an extra £3.7m in costs, according to Oxford City Council. The total project cost is up from a previous estimate of £10.3m to just over £14m.

The bridge has attracted opposition from local groups opposed to building on woodland. Friends of Grandpont Nature Park sought a Judicial Review in 2024. This was heard in March and rejected, but the group has now submitted an appeal. They claim the city council is “misusing” housing funds on the bridge.

The City Council says: “Following delay whilst the JR was heard, costs have increased due to programme prolongation and construction cost inflation.” If the appeal is dismissed, the council hopes to sign a contract late this year, so that site works begin in spring 2026 with completion in spring 2027 – four years after the initially proposed completion date.

The budget increase will be debated by the City Council’s Cabinet on 13 August. We looked at the arguments for and against the bridge in a long read last year.

In other bridge news, Oxford City Council has installed history information boards next to the recently restored Gasworks Pipe Bridge to tell the story of the gasworks of which it was once part. The bridge was built in 1927 to connect the two parts of Oxford’s gasworks, carrying both workers & a large gas pipe.

Local historian Liz Woolley, who carried out the research for the information boards, said: “The gasworks were a major industrial site, very close to housing. But there were compensations: it was a good spot for fishing, as the gasworks discharged hot water into the river, attracting fish!”

City Councillor for Hinksey Park, Anna Railton, said: “This bridge, and the former railway bridge further along the river, are an important reminder of Oxford’s industrial past. We wanted to highlight that with these boards, which we hope will be of interest to both local residents and to visitors.”

The Oxford Preservation Trust and Shotover Preservation Society have been awarded £49,000 by the National Lottery Heritage Fund to share the history of Slade Camp, Shotover. The former army training camp was used to house displaced families after World War II.

The project will record the experiences of former residents while the Camp itself will be celebrated with a signed trail. The first public viewing will be part of Oxford Open Doors, while an exhibition will open at the Westgate Library in September.

Anna Eavis, Oxford Preservation Trust, said: “We’re thrilled. Thanks to National Lottery players the story of Slade Camp will be told by the people who know it best. Our project will raise awareness of the historic significance of Slade Camp and create a community amenity with a remarkable past.”

(Read more about Slade Camp at the Headington History and Oxford Sausage websites.)

Around the city

• The popular walking route through Lye Valley nature reserve in Headington is partly inaccessible after the raised boardwalk was set on fire overnight. The Friends of Lye Valley have reported the vandalism to Oxford City Council. The steeper entrance via Peat Moors is open but the boardwalk from The Slade remains closed.
• A petition to save Headington Post Office has reached 1,000 signatures. Midcounties Co-op plan to close their store in January 2026. The petition was set up by Oxford’s Labour councillors and Anneliese Dodds MP, who has asked Post Office Ltd for a meeting.
• Refugees and asylum seekers in Oxford are being given courses in maths, coding and academic literacy, thanks to a project organised by Asylum Welcome and Oxford University’s Lifelong Learning department. The university received University of Sanctuary status in 2023. The core maths course was designed by Dr Tom Crawford and course tutor, Behrad Ahmadpour, to help students with the kind of maths that will be useful to them in their daily lives, from taxes to interest rates. Dr Tom Crawford said: “They now just seem confident. Two or three of them actually said ‘we had a fear, we were scared of maths’. Now they see numbers and percentages, and they’re not scared. I think that’s the perfect outcome.”
• The proprietor of Uni Food & Wine, opposite the railway station, has pleaded guilty to offences relating to illegal vapes and tobacco at Oxford Magistrates' Court. Avtar Singh Lulpurwal will be sentenced in November. His premises licence for selling alcohol has already been revoked.
• A “tear off and take away” poster campaign is promoting the Ashmolean’s upcoming exhibition of the art of Thom Yorke and Stanley Donwood, This Is What You Get. Passers-by are invited to tear away the artwork, revealing the exhibition details underneath. The tear-off posters have been installed at sites in Brixton. The exhibition opens on 6 August for six months.

• Central Oxford Mosque Society is actively raising funds for the people of Gaza, including food parcels and cash grants. The society was rapped over the knuckles this week by the Charity Commission over “divisive and inflammatory posts outside the charity’s purposes”: the Mosque’s social media channels had posted information about what to do if arrested at a protest, and a cartoon criticising media reporting. (And the difficulty of getting the reporting right is why we chose not just to report the Charity Commission verbatim but to balance it with the fundraising work.)
• Bishop of Oxford Steven Croft, together with the bishops of Dorchester, Buckingham, and Reading, has reiterated his support for trans rights in the face of the recent Supreme Court ruling. The bishops write: “We believe that both those who are biological women (born a woman) and those who are trans women (born a man) are beloved of God and have rights. We are aware that the Supreme Court ruling in April caused concerns among impacted groups. We want the church to be a welcoming and safe place in which all are included.”
• ‘Tourism Hubs’ are being set up by the City Council to counter Oxford’s lack of an official tourist information centre. They offer free resources including maps, locations of toilets, and college opening times. 11 have been installed at key visitor destinations.
• The consultation on Oxford's temporary congestion charge for cars is open until midnight on Sunday. Oxfordshire County Council’s Andrew Gant wrote in Transport Xtra this week about tackling congestion in the city.

Around the county

• The riverside Upper Reaches Hotel in Abingdon has been sitting derelict for ten years and “a speedy end” to the situation is needed, say the town’s civic society. The overgrown building and car park are situated in a prime location by Abingdon Bridge. The building is on a 125-year lease from Vale of White Horse District Council to Contemporary Hotels Ltd, which is controlled by the sons of Labour peer Swraj Paul. Friends of Abingdon Civic Society says that Ambar Paul “cancelled numerous meetings last year and did not actually meet them [VOWH] till this spring”. A promised planning application has not yet materialised. The Civic Society believes “Contemporary Hotels should either bring forward their redevelopment plans or give up the lease”, but worries the company is “playing a long game”.
• An Oxfordshire Blue Plaque was unveiled in Thame to John Henry Smythe, an RAF officer who – after being held as a POW in Germany – became one of Britain’s first black barristers and a QC, and then served as Attorney General of Sierra Leone. He lived the last five years of his life at Garden City, Thame, and is buried in St. Mary's churchyard.
• A solar farm just north of Witney has been given planning permission. Quarry Solar Farm will have capacity of 35MW and be in operation for 40 years, with an accompanying battery energy storage system. Energy giants RWE are behind the scheme. West Oxfordshire District Council has given permission for the scheme following a refusal in 2023. Changes since then include reinstatement of historic hedgerows, increased offset from nearby roads, and wider spaces “to maintain foraging opportunities for bats, dormice, reptiles and other wildlife”.

• A ceremonial funeral procession to honour firefighter Martyn Sadler, who died in the Bicester Motion fire, took place on Thursday. Martyn was carried through Bicester on London Fire Brigade’s Turntable Ladder and his cortege route was lined with firefighters and blue light colleagues. Hangar 79, which was extensively damaged by the fire, is to be demolished following discussion with Historic England, Cherwell District Council and structural professionals.
• Kidlington is discussing whether to give up its cherished “village” status and become a town. Parish council chair Lesley McLean says that new developments will see it and nearby settlements swell to a combined population of 35,000, comparing this to Witney’s current 34,000. In an update to residents, she writes: “Changing to a Town could bring additional support funding and partnership opportunities and allow us to be taken seriously in the wider Oxfordshire context.” Kidlington is regularly cited as one of the largest villages in England, though many of the contenders are effectively suburbs of larger cities.
• The owners of a closed pub in the North Oxfordshire village of Deddington have applied to change it to residential use. The Crown & Tuns, for many years known as a “pie pub”, closed in 2023. (The pie operation has since moved to the Marlstone Tavern in nearby Adderbury. Mmmm… pie.) The owners say “robust and comprehensive marketing efforts to find a viable business interest for the property as a public house have been undertaken… these efforts were however unsuccessful, despite the asking price being lowered several times”. The village has two other pubs. First recorded in 1808, the Crown & Tuns was a successful inn on the main road from Oxford to Banbury; in 1897 a new tenant had to be found after “the previous tenant of the inn gave up the occupation and opened a temperance room in the town”.

Council reorganisation

We really must think of a less stupefyingly dull headline for this bit. How about: “The Battle of the Green Belt”? Because that’s what this week has been.

Oxford City Council put out a video starring deputy leader Anna Railton explaining their proposal for a Greater Oxford council. It’s on Facebook and Twitter, and no doubt other platforms used by people younger than your Clarion correspondent. But the gist is this:

“Oxford’s transport system is properly broken… the real cause is the Green Belt. Every single day, tens of thousands of people commute from their homes [in Bicester, Witney &c.] to the city through the Green Belt. Our solution: build homes on the edge of Oxford, particularly in poor quality Green Belt. We’re proposing a new council which would cover Oxford and its Green Belt. We could extend the city’s bus routes into the surrounding villages, bringing better services to places like Berinsfield, Botley, Kennington, Wheatley and Kidlington.”

Countryside charity CPRE is unimpressed. It says the plans are “flawed and dangerously tilted toward unchecked development”, highlighting their impact on the Green Belt:

“Areas such as Berinsfield, Culham, and Kidlington – already earmarked for housing – have conveniently been included within the proposed boundary. This isn’t strategic land use, it’s opportunistic expansion. And it risks shifting Oxford’s unmet housing needs onto neighbouring countryside – the very spaces meant to shield the city from overdevelopment and urban sprawl.”

The three competing proposals are being toured around the county in a series of ‘roadshows’, probably less exciting than the Radio One events of our youth. (Here’s PCC Matthew Barber doorstepping a Greater Oxford event.) The City Council consultation on its Greater Oxford plan is open for a further fortnight. The plans will be submitted to Government in November.

(Here’s our long read on Greater Oxford.)

Oxfordshire politics

221 MPs, including five of the seven Oxfordshire MPs, signed a letter to the Prime Minister urging the UK to recognise Palestine as a state (the missing signatories are Charlie Maynard and Anneliese Dodds). Parliament is now in recess and will return on 1 September.

Oxfordshire’s five Liberal Democrat MPs have called for action on private Special Educational Needs providers “lining their pockets exploiting a system in crisis”. In a joint statement, they said: “SEND provision is a key issue for many parents across Oxfordshire, so we are deeply concerned to see this greedy profiteering from private equity firms. It is a major driver of the crisis in our SEND system. The Government needs to cap the profits of these firms at 8%, to ensure that money is channelled back into the SEND system.”

• Thames Valley Police & Crime Commissioner Matthew Barber has been drawing attention to illegal hare coursing this week as we head in to harvest season. He called on the Government to update police forces across the country on news of a promised pay award, and spoke to BBC Oxford about the increase in seized e-bikes and e-scoooters. This is his last week's roundup.
• Oxford East MP Anneliese Dodds has been reporting lots of hyperlocal constituency MP actions this week: Marston pharmacy is now fully staffed and there's movement on keeping a Post Office in Headington (but the Post Office needs to find someone to run it). As MP of a riverine constituency, on World Drowning Prevention Day she raised the need for better water safety education. Her first national interview since resigning as International Development minister was given to the Guardian.
• Banbury MP Sean Woodcock has been on a Parliamentary delegation to Jordan, looking at the schools run by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees, and visiting a camp housing over 65,000 refugees. He called it an “eye-opening visit”.
• Witney MP Charlie Maynard posted a monthly newsletter focusing on support for small businesses, Thames Water (of course), and “dancing along with the participants” at the Witney Carnival Parade.
• Didcot & Wantage MP Olly Glover spoke to BBC South about what could be done to support young carers, following a forum he chaired on the subject. Together with other local MPs he wrote to National Highways to ask for improvements to the A34.
• Henley & Thame MP Freddie van Mierlo expressed concern at reports of a pollution incident in the River Thame. He continued his campaigning for the Thame to Haddenham Greenway, which is being held up by landowner issues, saying “I’m pleased that Active Travel England will now publish guidance including case studies showing how other councils have successfully used Compulsory Purchase Orders to deliver walking and cycling infrastructure.”
• Bicester & Woodstock MP Calum Miller shared this round up of his past week's activities, including chairing a steering group looking for new premises for the GP surgery in Woodstock. He wrote to the Rail Minister, Lord Peter Hendy, calling on him to abandon plans for a footbridge with lifts at Bicester’s London Road level crossing and commit to an underpass instead, saying “East West Rail and the Government must stop treating this decision as a technical issue and start listening to the people who live here.”

University and research

• It was graduation week.
• Jesus College has appointed the first woman principal in its 454-year history. Lindsay Skoll will take up the post on 1 August 2026, succeeding Professor Sir Nigel Shadbolt. Currently the UK’s ambassador to Austria, she has held a series of senior Foreign Office posts.
• Extensively studied pairs of great tits in Wytham Woods are providing clues to early ‘divorce’ say researchers at Oxford University. The study followed the same birds across multiple years to uncover how partnerships form, persist and unravel through the seasons. Professor Ben Sheldon, who led the study, said ‘This work is an important step towards uncovering the social mechanics behind pair bonding and fidelity in the wild’.
• A topping-out ceremony has taken place for Oxford University’s new Global Health Building at the Old Road campus. The building, due to open late next year, will house researchers from the Centre for Tropical Medicine & Global Health and from Oxford Population Health. A timelapse video shows construction so far, with 14 months of work compressed into 12m30.

Walking, cycling and boating

• School Streets could be rolled out across the county following a study commissioned by Oxfordshire County Council. OCC has engaged transport consultants to assess every Oxfordshire school for “geographical positioning, environmental considerations, the potential for modal shift, and road safety”. School Streets are currently in force at seven Oxford primary schools, plus one in Abingdon and one in Didcot. They aim to encourage walking and cycling, and to reduce road danger. The owner of any vehicle entering the street at pick-up or drop-off time is issued a Penalty Charge Notice. Transport consultancy WSP has been engaged to draw up the assessment.
• Prisoners at HMP Bullingdon are being trained as bike mechanics thanks to a grant from GWR. The 'Bikes Beyond Bars' programme run by charity Life Cycle is already operating in prisons in Bristol and Leicestershire. The Life Cycle scheme trains prisoners to achieve the Cytech 'technical one' qualification. Earlier this month, 107 abandoned bicycles were donated by Oxford City Council to social enterprise Recycle Your Cycle, which runs a similar scheme in prisons across England.
• The Environment Agency is warning boaters on the River Thames about low water levels, particularly downstream of locks. It is placing “summer boards” on the top of weirs to increase the depth of each reach, and has asked boaters to share locks to reduce water usage.

Trains and buses

• Oxford could be getting better trains to the West of England. Draft versions of the new rail timetable, due to start in December, show an hourly GWR service from Oxford to Swindon – though not marked as carrying passengers, suggesting they may be training runs. Journeys would take as little as half an hour. East-West Rail and Oxfordshire County Council recently promoted a study arguing that an hourly service from Oxford to Swindon and Bristol would be “quick, affordable and simple”. The trial Saturday service from Oxford to Bristol is due to resume on 20 September.
• A swathe of Oxford bus stops are to get digital advertising displays. Oxford City Council has given permission for double-sided screens, run by advertising giant Clear Channel, at 17 locations across the city. Similar screens are already in place at city centre bus stops. The newly approved sites are on Botley Road (x3), Abingdon Road, Banbury Road (x4), Woodstock Road (x3), Iffley Road (x4), St Aldates, and Cowley Road. The advertising images change every 10 seconds and are turned off between midnight and 5am.
• Oxford Bus Company has committed to restoring a bus service from Iffley Road to the railway station if the congestion charge is implemented. There has not been a direct route since 2011 (except briefly during the pandemic).

Dates for your diary

• Oxford United signing session at the Westgate. Tuesday 5 August, 3.30pm, John Lewis. Featuring players from OUFC’s men’s and women’s teams. If your kids have been inspired by the Lionesses’ win, why not take them to see Oxford’s own football stars?
• Medea’s Fury, Minerva’s Mercy. (How about that for a title?) Tuesday 5 August, 8pm, Christ Church Cathedral. Oxford’s period instrument orchestra, Instruments of Time and Truth, perform “fabulous cantatas, each telling this dramatic story from a different perspective” from the French baroque.
• Hidden Voices of WW1. Thursday 7 August, Museum of Oxford. Children's author Bali Rai explores wartime stories including Oxford's own flying ace Hardit Singh Malik.
• The Tale of Jemima Puddle-Duck. Thursday 14 August, Witney Corn Exchange. Outdoor show for under 10s. The pictures look adorable [Facebook link].
• Dust off your shell suit and put the batteries in your Walkman! RADwood, a celebration of 80's and 90's cars & mopeds is at Bicester Motion on Saturday 23 August. Cosplay optional. (brb, just dusting off my shoulder pads and fitting a battery to my Raleigh Chopper)
• A Personal History of Resistance, Saturday 4 October, Sheldonian Theatre. Former Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis speaks about his political awakening.

This weekend

We've been updating our Market Directory lately, a spot of market tourism for your Clarion scribes. (If you're new here, we wrote this because there didn't seem to be another listing, and to support local producers – see also our history of market towns.) If you visit a market this weekend, do send us a snap and/or a couple of lines so we can update the listing, and make it the best crowdsourced listing around.

It’s festival season!

• Wilderness Festival, Cornbury Park, Charlbury. The achingly cool music, arts, cookery and discussion festival starts today. At the time of writing, weekend and Sunday tickets are still available.
• Supernormal Festival, Braziers Park, near Wallingford. An “independent and uncompromising festival… for a new kind of audience seeking experiences out of the mainstream”. Weekend tickets are sold out but Sunday tickets are still available.
• EdFest, Edmonds Park, Didcot. Live music bash on Saturday with real ale.
• Sunningwell Festival, just north of Abingdon. Music and arts festival, with two operas plus Oxford folk hero Jon Boden. All weekend.
• Cider & Foodie Fest, Big Society and the Yard, Cowley Road. 14 ciders plus street food in this new annual event. Saturday.
• British Transplant Games, various venues around the county. The “transplant Olympics” help transplant patients to regain fitness while increasing public awareness of the NHS Organ Donation Register.

Oxfordshire’s independent media

• Bitten Oxford rounds up half-hour lunches in Oxford. (We’d add Sasi’s Thai in the Covered Market to the list: quick, reasonably priced, delicious!)
• Little Oxplorers has a huge summer guide for school holiday inspiration.
• Isis Magazine, Oxford (and Britain)’s longest running student magazine, considers China’s Frankenstein.
• Ox in a Box previews the upcoming Crime Fiction Weekend at St Hilda’s.
• Nightshift’s August issue interviews fast-rising Oxford band South Arcade.
• Witney Gitzette takes a satirical look at the Jobs wedding in Great Tew.

Notes from Clarion HQ

Do you like trains? Do you like more housing? Of course you do, you’re a Clarion reader. In which case, we have just the long read for you, coming up next week. Watch this space.

Last week we wrote about infrastructure levies and West Oxfordshire’s intention (like other Oxfordshire districts) to exempt the largest developments from them. Eynsham district councillor Dan Levy got in touch to talk about the balance between Section 106 and Community Infrastructure Levy, the two forms of funding:

The exclusion of CIL from WODC strategic sites isn't letting developers off the hook. The logic is that, even without CIL, the amount of S106 required for the local infrastructure already is enough for the developers to be able successfully to argue about the viability of projects. I know they do that in every case anyway, and are pretty much guaranteed a huge profit, and the whole system is skewed to support the developers, but the reality is that CIL would just reduce the amount of S106 in those strategic sites.

Local press news: Chancellor Rachel Reeves this week signalled her intention to scrap the regulations that require cafés and pubs to advertise in printed newspapers, at a cost of over £100 a time (believe us, we’ve been there), when applying for a licence. This is a winner twice over: it removes an unnecessary burden on small hospitality businesses, and it ends an unfair subsidy for the legacy press over independent online publishers. (Like us!) Their trade associations have predictably gone ape, but we’d hope this is just the start of removing their raft of subsidies.

And here’s a lovely report we found of the first ever Clarion cycling tour in 1894. It refers to early Clarion writer ‘The Bounder’, who publicised the newspaper by sticking notices on unsuspecting cows saying “Read the Clarion every week”. Of course we’d be delighted if our readers were to do the same, but we’ll settle for you telling your friends and colleagues about us. Have a great week.