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Clarion Weekly, 20 December 2024

Clarion Weekly, 20 December 2024
Campaigning has started for the May elections, this week with a festive slant. Emma Garnett (Green Party candidate for Parks) and City councillors Max Morris and Alex Powell. (Photo: Oxford Green Party)

This week’s top stories

In a brace of Clarion long reads this week, we first looked at the Tiny Forest in Headington that is causing big trouble. Will a new housing development mean it’s bulldozed just a few years after it was planted?

Oxfordshire’s councils could be rearranged – potentially abolishing city and district councils, and electing a Thames Valley mayor. We took a look at the implications with a comparison to your Christmas cheeseboard. But will it age like an artisan parmigiano, or like milk?

The proposed Botley West Solar Farm has moved on a stage following the national Planning Inspectorate’s decision to “accept this application for Examination”. The inspectorate agreed that the application “is of a satisfactory standard” to be considered. The solar farm would be deemed nationally significant infrastructure, and as such the decision is made by central Government planners under Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner, rather than by the local district councils which judge most applications.

Consultation closed on Monday on Dalton Barracks, the plan to extend Abingdon to the west of the A34 with a 5,250-home ‘Garden Village’ on MoD land. The barracks are due to close in 2031.

The first-phase consultation, covering design principles, will be followed by “engagement events” next year. The MoD Defence Infrastructure Organisation says it wants “a culture of walking and cycling” and a design incorporating 250 acres of parkland. New primary schools and a secondary school would be included; 40% of homes would be affordable. The site is not near a railway but would have improved buses. If a planning application is submitted in 2026 and received favourably, work could start on site in 2029.

Oxford's Christmas market on Broad Street, as seen from the top floor of the Alpine bar (Oxford City Council)

Around the city

  • The Covered Market is celebrating a ‘bumper year’ according to Oxford City Council, with including 90% occupancy, two new traders just moving in, and over one million visitors between September and November this year (up from 900,000 in 2023). The two new traders are Again Garments, affordable vintage clothing, and James Taylor Photo Art, vibrant prints and stationery. YOU Underwear was nominated for Social Enterprise Women’s Champion of the Year, while John Gowing Jewellers was named one of the top 150 inspirational independent businesses by Retail Jeweller Magazine. Il Corno, celebrating their first anniversary, said: “This year has been a dream come true. We couldn’t be happier with the support we’ve received from the market community.” 2025 will see the next steps in the market’s redevelopment plans with a proposed new entrance from Market Street, as well as a County Council decision on making the pedestrian and cycle zone permanent. Cllr Susan Brown, Leader of Oxford City Council, said: “The Covered Market is a treasure at the heart of Oxford and it showcases the strength of our local community & economy. It's a fantastic mix of both old and new. We're committed to ensuring the market thrives."
  • The Headington Shark House will no longer be available as a short let (Airbnb) after Oxford City Council won a planning appeal. Instead, it has now re-entered the housing market: the four-bed home is listed for rent at £6,000/month from March, significantly higher than comparable properties nearby. The Planning Inspectorate has ruled short let activities must cease from 11 March 2025. Cllr Linda Smith, City cabinet member for housing, said: “It’s almost impossible to say how many much-needed homes Oxford has lost to short lets because the sector is still virtually unregulated. There are nearly 3,500 households on our waiting list and short lets can cause misery in our communities.” The City Council first issued an enforcement notice for the property in November 2023, following a complaint from a member of the public, but the owner appealed to the Planning Inspectorate. July 2023 data recorded 1,325 short lets in Oxford, over half of which were entire properties.
  • A driver who admitted to buying a ‘blue badge’ on Snapchat has been prosecuted under an Oxfordshire County Council crackdown on abuse of blue badge rules. Mr Lleshi from Oxford was fined £153 plus a court charge of £61. The council was awarded costs of £350. An on-street enforcement exercise by Oxfordshire County Council’s counter fraud team led to two men appearing at Oxford Magistrates’ Court last week. It follows the prosecution of a woman in Oxford in May for a similar offence. Cllr Neil Fawcett, cabinet member for community, said: “People rely on their blue badges so that they can park near workplaces, supermarkets and health facilities. It is not acceptable to misuse this service and this ongoing enforcement operation shows we are taking action to stop this abuse.”

Around the county

  • A groundbreaking copper house has been completed on Harcourt Hill. Shaped by Passivhaus principles, and built with minimal concrete, it is surrounded by a wildflower meadow, and copper-clad to double up as a ‘solar helmet’, protecting the glazing from sun.
  • Oxfordshire County Council says over two tonnes of disposable vapes have been recycled since recycling schemes were started in November 2023, well ahead of target. The UK is set to ban disposable vapes from June 2025. Cllr Dr Pete Sudbury, Deputy Leader of Oxfordshire County Council said: “The best solution is for disposable vapes to be banned; in the meantime, our efforts to get as many of these items as possible into the recycling system have been a great success. We thank everyone who's taken part.” Recycling points can be found here
  • Oxfordshire County Council has launched a major new programme to reduce health inequalities. The Marmot Place project will adopt the evidence-based principles & methodology developed by founder Sir Michael Marmot to tackle the social determinants of health. Oxfordshire is the first County Council to adopt this approach. Council Leader Liz Leffman said: “This new partnership will benefit many lives in Oxfordshire and significantly advance our goals of alleviating major health disparities and fostering healthier, more active and safer communities.”
  • The A361 has reopened after emergency repairs have been completed on the sinkhole near Wardington. Cllr Andrew Gant, Oxfordshire County Council’s cabinet member for highways said: “I am extremely grateful to our teams for making this a priority and reopening this busy road earlier than expected. While this repair work was carried on an emergency basis in order to reopen the road as quickly as possible, we will be working with our partners at Cherwell District Council and the Environment Agency in the new year to explore whether more permanent repairs are necessary." The most recent inspection of the culvert by the council’s highways teams, carried out before the flooding, showed no cause for concern in the culvert’s condition. However, debris had blocked the watercourse, submerging the culvert. We wrote about flooding, and its impact on Oxfordshire, in a long read here.
  • Electric flying taxis in Oxfordshire got one step closer this week as Skyports broke ground on their planned 'Vertiport' in Bicester. Once complete, it will test electric vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) flight operations & ground infrastructure enabling the next generation of UK aviation. Duncan Walker, CEO at Skyports said: “With spades in ground, we are one step closer to delivering our vertiport at Bicester Motion. We look forward to opening the facility in a few months’ time to continue our efforts to develop and scale electric air taxi services.” We wrote about the automotive tech hotspot and ‘future mobility’ site Bicester Motion in a long read involving flying taxis and vintage Rolls Royces.
  • Thames Valley Police & Crime Commissioner Matthew Barber has hit out at the recent government announcement of a £1bn funding boost for police, saying it falls short of the increase necessary to maintain current levels of policing, “let alone deliver the increases that we would all want to see”. While he was pleased to see a funding increase he warned that a Council Tax hike would still be needed, as a third of the national £1bn increase announced by the Policing Minister was expected to be funded in this way. On Tuesday, the government announced a £1bn funding boost for policing including offsetting costs associated with the recent rise in employer National Insurance contributions, plus funding to kickstart recruitment of 13,00 neighbourhood police officers.
  • And finally... would you like to see Thames Valley Police horses in Santa hats? Of course you would!

University & research

  • An Oxford-led hydropower project has been awarded £2m to make clean energy generation in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia more efficient. Professor Louise Slater, Professor of Hydroclimatology, said the project would entail “integrating sensors and satellite-based monitoring with existing models and machine learning to support the energy efficiency and safety of the existing network of small hydropower plants.”
  • In a podcast, the Oxford Vaccine Group hosted former Health Secretary Matt Hancock, discussing the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine, lockdowns, and public health policy/communication. Worth a listen.

Trains and buses

  • A last-minute pay deal has averted collapse of GWR’s service this Sunday (22nd) and next (29th), but widespread cancellations are still expected. GWR has agreed to pay drivers and guards double rate. The company does not have enough staff to run a full Sunday service without overtime. The new timetable which started this week sees some of the earliest Sunday morning trains from Oxford increased from five to nine carriages, which should help alleviate overcrowding especially when services are cancelled. Separately, between the 27th and 29th, trains will not run into Paddington due to works for the HS2 station at Old Oak Common: some longer distance services will be diverted into Euston, but Oxford–London passengers are advised to use Chiltern services to Marylebone instead.
  • Stagecoach have confirmed their standard bus fare in Oxfordshire will rise from £2 to £3 on 1 January following the hike in the national fare cap. Multi-trip tickets purchased by app will also see a price rise.

Walking and cycling

  • Oxford United has submitted a tranche of new documents in support of their plans for a new stadium at the Triangle, near Kidlington. They now propose 450 cycle parking spaces (up from 150) and a cycleway to Peartree P&R via the underused Frieze Way. OUFC say that their latest modelling predicts minimal disruption to roads: “Buses and bicycles will now be able to pass through limited matchday diversions on Oxford Road unaffected, with cars diverted along Frieze Way for a short period before and after Men's First Team games.” Cherwell District Council says it is still awaiting “further information relating to alternative site assessment”. Once this is received from OUFC, Cherwell expects to re-consult on the plans in the New Year, and currently has a target date of March 31 for a decision.
  • Oxfordshire County Council has opened a consultation on improving walking and cycling in Carterton. The town currently has no safe routes to nearby Witney; cyclist Tim Joss was killed on a road outside the town earlier this year.

Labour campaigning in Iffley Fields; Cllr Brad Baines with campaigners. LibDem Cllr Katherine Miles campaigning in North Oxford. Conservatives campaigning in Kingston Bagpuize, candidate Lee Evans together with Cllr Liam Walker.

Is there an election coming up?

Campaigning has started for the May elections to Oxfordshire County Council – with some campaigning having a festive twist (as in our header image)! Send us your best campaigning photos and tell us why you’re out knocking on doors, and we'll highlight them here – any and all parties welcome.

Liberal Democrat MPs Freddie van Mierlo, Layla Moran and Charlie Maynard.

Oxfordshire politics

In this section we recap what we’ve spotted Oxfordshire MPs up to in the last week. By way of illustration, this is just one MP’s summary of December, and it's not over yet. Parliament, however, is now in recess until 6th January. We hope all our MPs and their staff enjoy a restful festive break.

We frequently see Oxfordshire’s five LibDem MPs campaigning together, and this week was no exception with three stories hitting the headlines. First up was the WASPI pension campaign group, after the Government confirmed it would not pay compensation to women born in the 1950s who (according to a Parliamentary Ombudsman) were not properly informed their state pension age would rise from 60 to 65. Layla Moran commented: “What a shambles of a day. What a disappointment of a Government.” [Editorial aside: we found this Twitter post interesting about the choice of language when talking about state benefits.]

The five LibDem MPs also issued a joint statement of concern about Royal Mail in the week that the Government announced approval of a takeover bid by Czech billionaire Daniel Kretinsky. Finally, they repeated their calls for Ofwat to be replaced after it approved a 35% rise in Thames Water bills.

This weekend

  • So many carol services and Christmas concerts we can’t possibly list them all. Check out the boards on Broad Street or Daily Info for concerts, and browse church websites for carol services. (Our round-up gives you a taste of what’s on offer.)
  • Ukrainian Christmas Festival, 21 December, 11am to 5pm. Ukrainian Friendship Centre, St Michael & All Angels Church, Summertown. Charity fair with a Ukrainian choir, food, drink, crafting – plus “everyone who comes in a costume and tells a poem gets a gift from the real St Nicholas”.
  • The Oxford Magazine highlights brilliant things to do in Oxford this weekend if you have guests over.

Dates for your diary

  • The Great Brook Run takes place in Chadlington, near Chipping Norton, on 28 December. Described as a “fun run taking you across muddy fields and through a cold, wet brook” (we might quibble with the word “fun”), David Cameron is a regular, it’s only a mile long, and it ends at the pub.
  • Headington Quarry Morris Dancers perform a traditional Mummers Play and handbell ringing outside the pubs in Headington Quarry, Boxing Day. From 11.15 outside the former Crown & Thistle.
  • Day Fever is an afternoon of ‘daytime clubbing’ at the O2. Feb 15 2025, 3pm-8pm. Yes, we did put Morris dancing next to clubbing. We love this city.
  • The Rocky Horror Show comes to Oxford on 21-26 April. No explanation needed.

Oxford’s independent media

Notes from Clarion HQ

We have been cross-posting stories to Twitter and Bluesky recently. One story neatly illustrated the difference between the two platforms. On Thursday we posted a minor story about a mature tree that would have to be removed following a car hitting it on the Iffley Road. (All the occupants were fine; the tree is toast; insurance will pay the council £80,000.)

Here’s the same story on Twitter and Bluesky. Increasingly we get more engagement on Bluesky, but this one barely made a splash. Twitter's reaction? 200,000 views and a litany of outraged “£80k for a tree??” and “Barking!”. (For those really interested, the value of the tree is assessed according to a public scale.) And we allowed ourselves a little sigh that an £80,000 tree gets people more worked up than a £332m relief road.

The Clarion newsletter will be taking a short break for the festive season, so we’ll take this opportunity to wish each and every one of our subscribers a very merry Christmas and thanks for being here. We appreciate each and every one of you.

We know that the festive season may be challenging for some. For anyone in trouble this Christmas, here are resources you can reach out to:

Oxford Mutual Aid is running a crowdfunder to help provide emergency food parcels to our neighbours in need. We'll just leave the link here. See you in the New Year.