Clarion Weekly, 2 August 2024

This week’s top stories

Oxford city centre continues to beat national footfall figures while attracting more local visitors – despite national figures being propped up by Taylor Swift's Eras tour. In a Clarion exclusive, our full story is here.

Oxford–Banbury–Birmingham train services are being cut again. Train operator CrossCountry is withdrawing eight services each day on the Reading–Newcastle route via Oxford. The cuts will reduce the service to broadly hourly, with no trains in the evening peak between 16.40 and 18.12.

The reductions start on 10 August and will last until at least 9 November. CrossCountry says the intention is “to address reliability and performance challenges which have inconvenienced our customers with on-the-day cancellations”.

The carriages will be redeployed to the Bristol–Birmingham–Edinburgh route. CrossCountry is ultimately owned by private equity firm I-Squared through their Arriva subsidiary, who recently withdrew their buses from Oxford; all timetable changes are signed off by the Government’s Department for Transport.

The Kidlington Roundabout rebuild is complete with new cycle tracks, traffic light crossings, and dedicated bus lanes at key points. The design was extensively rethought after early criticism from cycling groups.

Oxfordshire County Council’s cabinet member Judy Roberts said “This project dramatically improves safety and connectivity for cyclists and pedestrians. New signalised parallel crossings on Bicester Road, Oxford Road south and Frieze Way make a real difference to people on foot and cycling.”

The area is expected to see rapid growth with almost 5,000 houses to be built in the vicinity plus the prospect of Oxford United’s new stadium at the Triangle. Other nearby highway improvements have included a southbound bus lane and widened cycleways on the A44.

An Oxford doctor diagnosed his own son with a rare sarcoma while on a family holiday. Now in remission, father and son are raising both awareness of early diagnosis and funds for Sarcoma UK. Full story here.

Oxfordshire politics

Parliament is now in recess but before it stopped for the summer, Oxfordshire's MP's were active and working for their constituencies. Here’s a short summary of local highlights from the last week.

• Didcot & Wantage MP Olly Glover has been appointed vice-chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Cycling & Walking. APPGs bring together MPs with a special interest from across the political spectrum to discuss policy and hold inquiries.
• Glover also spoke in Parliament on the Passenger Railway Services Bill. He highlighted the Botley Road overrunning railway works, and, bringing insights from his former career as a railway consultant, made the case that public vs private debate will not in itself create the change needed on fares, timetables & better customer service. His full speech is below.

• Banbury MP Sean Woodcock voted to renationalise the railways – a particularly relevant issue in Banbury given this week’s cuts to the Oxford–Banbury train service (see above).
• Oxfordshire’s new MPs have been updating on what they've been up to since the election. Here are updates from Calum Miller and Olly Glover in their own words.

Cycling and walking news

• E-bikes are now available for rent in Oxford from Voi, operators of the existing e-scooter scheme. The Voi app is currently showing available bikes in a number of East Oxford and Headington locations: they can be ridden to any existing Voi parking site. Unlocking the bike typically costs £1, then 22p per minute (day/month passes are available). 100 e-bikes are to be deployed around the city. Oxford has not had a dockless bike hire system since the collapse of Ofo, Mobike, Obike et al, though Bainton Bikes continue to offer tourist-focused hire, and a small number of Bromptons are available outside the station.

Around the city

• Construction is underway on 40 affordable homes off Butts Lane, New Marston. Long-established Oxford firm Lucy Developments and Oxford City Council’s housing arm OX Place are building 26 houses and 14 flats. Completion is expected in November. 21 units will be council homes for people on the City housing register, with 19 shared ownership homes. Heating and hot water will be supplied by air-source heat pumps, but conservation area constraints mean there will be no solar panels.
• Barclays is seeking to move its Cornmarket branch across the road to Jesus College’s new Northgate/Cheng Yu Tung building. Oxford City Council has approved a planning application for Units 4 & 5, on the corner with Market Street. The adjacent unit has already been taken by HSBC to replace their current premises by Carfax. Across Britain, banks are downsizing or withdrawing entirely from high street locations as customers move online.
• Nine council homes are being built in a disused former hostel in Lake Street. Roken House had variously served as a hostel for young mothers and their children and ex-offenders since the 1960s but will now provide accommodation for single people and couples without children.

Around the county

• Early plans for two new housing developments have been lodged with South Oxfordshire District Council. A 400-home development (40% affordable) is proposed for the northern edge of Wallingford by Croudace Homes. 1,600 more homes have already been approved for the town. A second scheme, by Lagan Homes, proposes 70 new houses on the eastern side of Wheatley, plus employment space and a care home. Both schemes are at the earliest stage, where developers request a ‘Screening Opinion’, and outline planning applications have not been submitted yet.
• Meanwhile at Grove Airfield, over the border in Vale of White Horse, 65 homes have been given planning permission. 22 will be transferred to a housing association for affordable and social housing. The Grove Airfield site is expected to have 1,500 houses when fully developed.

University and research

• A 17th century book belonging to the poet John Donne has been rediscovered in Oriel College’s library. The book, Commentarius ad Leges tam Regias by Antonius Clarus Sylvius, has Donne’s signature on the title page and his annotations throughout. Oriel is planning to recatalogue all 25,000 books in its Senior Library, examining each volume for marginalia and inscriptions. Librarian Hannah Robertson said “This discovery is promising in terms of what may be revealed by cataloguing the collection held in the Senior Library.”
• Peter Mandelson, William Hague and Theresa May are front-runners to become the next Chancellor of the University of Oxford, according to the FT. The role has been held by Chris Patten since 2003. Boris Johnson is “not putting his name forward”.
• Patients hospitalised with COVID-19 continue to have cognitive and psychiatric problems for 2–3 years post infection, according to research led by Oxford University and published in The Lancet. The researchers surveyed 475 people in the UK. The research also found that some people also experienced new symptoms 2-3 years post infection, meaning timely management is important. One in four participants reported changing their occupation due to poor health. Prof Paul Harrison, Professor of Psychiatry, said “We hope these findings will stimulate more research into the development of effective interventions to help prevent and treat those brain consequences of COVID-19.”
• A £9m donation will fund human milk research. The research centre, at the Nuffield Department of Women’s and Reproductive Health, was established in 2018 as the only such one in the UK. According to Krina Zondervan, head of the department: “Our vision is to fill knowledge gaps that can improve lactation and breastfeeding outcomes. Thanks to this endowment, we have a unique opportunity to establish a line of research that’s been underappreciated for too long.”
• Amber Therapeutics, a start-up involving the university, has secured £100m funding to develop a treatment for women with Mixed Urinary Incontinence, a debilitating medical condition that affects millions of women globally. The proceeds of the financing will be used to fund the development of treatment towards regulatory approval in the US. Professor Tim Denison, Chief Engineer at Amber, said: “This highlights the importance of partnerships between academic institutions and industry.”

This weekend

• This weekend sees the very chic Wilderness Festival out in Cornbury Park, near Charlbury – a festival where chefs and erudite talking heads are as important as the music. Tickets are still available.
• It’s FredFest in Wantage on Saturday, headlined by Toploader. We apologise for the earworm we have no doubt just given you.
• Oxford’s southern bypass will be closed to through traffic this weekend while the Littlemore roundabout is resurfaced. Traffic will be diverted between Cowley & Heyford Hill junctions. Oxfordshire County Council says a single closure is “quicker & more cost effective” than a long series of overnight closures.
• We don’t know if our Clarion forebears are featured in this “ramble through the history of land access in England” in an Upper Heyford pub. But they should be.
• As always, Daily Info and Nightshift are your go-to sources for Oxford events.

Notes from Clarion HQ

We have a long list of articles we're planning on writing and an ever growing list of collaborators – we thank each and every one of them. Is there a subject you're passionate about that you think needs more airtime? Could you collaborate with us on it? Or do you just wish to point us in a certain direction? Our inbox is always open at news@oxfordclarion.uk.

And here’s our bedtime reading this week. There are a thousand excerpts we could choose, but we’ll just leave this here from a section about the local newspaper conglomerates:

In the local context, diverse news ecosystems may serve to limit the dominance of particular business models and their associated editorial priorities and practices. […] Investment in news quality is not incentivised when you are the only player in town.