New Year Clarion, 6 January 2026

Pack away your amusingly-shaped nutcrackers: Christmas is over. (Photo by Roger Close)

A very Happy New Year to all our readers! The start of January always makes for a quiet news week, so this and the next newsletter or two will be shorter than you might expect. Over the festive break, we’ve been writing long reads and we have some absolute crackers lined up for you in the weeks to come.

This week’s long read

Did you miss our 2025 round-up? One last chance to read it here. Everyone does a 2025 retrospective, but only this one has seagull attacks, J.D. Vance’s summer holidays, sewage, herds of wildebeest sweeping majestically across the A40, our pick of the long reads, and lab space. So much lab space.

This week’s top stories

Oxfordshire County Council has spent over £16,000 removing 397 flags affixed to lampposts and other street furniture since August.

On average each flag has cost the county council around £40 to remove, but some have proved more expensive – such as one in Witney which was obstructing a traffic light, which incurred a cost of £300. OCC announced in December they had been removing flags where they posed an immediate risk, and that this risk had increased with the advent of darker, windier and wetter weather – such as flags being blown onto windscreens or being caught up in bicycle or car wheels. (We shouldn’t need to point out that the damages from one such incident could easily exceed £16,000, never mind the cost to human life.)

The figure was unearthed in a Freedom of Information request submitted by the Oxford Clarion, and subsequently taken up by a county council briefing and social media. Several councillors have highlighted abuse from social media commenters over the costs of fixing this vandalism; the leader of Witney Town Council, Cllr Ruth Smith, screenshotted a handful of ‘highlights’ in her Facebook comments.

Anneliese Dodds (photo by Roger Close); Professor Tamsin Mather; Frankie Allen.

Oxford East MP Anneliese Dodds has been appointed a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in the New Year Honours List. Her citation reads: “Bringing a breadth of policy expertise to Parliament, she has taken leading roles in financial service regulation and taxation.”

Among Oxford University academics receiving honours are Nicholas Day, Professor of Tropical Medicine; Tamsin Mather, Professor of Earth Sciences; Gideon Henderson, Professor of Earth Sciences; and Nigel Clifford, rector of Lincoln College.

The editors of community newspaper Chipping Norton News, Keith Ruddle and Jill Thorley, receive British Empire Medals. Douglas and Pauline Timms also receive BEMs for their work for the British Heart Foundation in Carterton. Oxford Food Hub volunteer Sara Strong receives a BEM for her work organising the Oxford Christmas Lunch at the King's Centre in Osney Mead, which welcomes 500 people who would otherwise dine alone at Christmas. Brian Buchan is appointed OBE for services to charities including inclusive sports centre OXSRAD and the Story Museum.

Paralympic rower Frankie Allen from Wallingford is appointed OBE for services to disability sport. She was part of Team GB’s gold medal-winning team at the 2024 Summer Paralympics. Also from Wallingford, British Rowing’s performance director Louise Kingsley is appointed OBE.

Tom Bindoff from Watlington, a specialist in accessible gates and stiles for public footpaths, receives the BEM for services to outdoor accessibility to nature. Composer and pianist Max Richter, who lives near Great Tew in north Oxfordshire, is appointed a CBE. A full list of honours is on the gov.uk website.

Around the city

A man in his 40s remains in a “life-threatening condition” after a city centre road traffic collision early Friday morning, according to Thames Valley Police. A black Toyota Prius was involved in the collision outside Magdalen College. TVP’s James Matthews appealed for witnesses: “I am particularly appealing to anyone who saw a man in the area, prior to the collision, carrying a guitar, to please contact us. I am also looking to speak to the driver of a lorry which I believe was stopped in the area, shortly before the collision.” Anyone with information is asked to call 101 or make an online report via the TVP website.
Florence Park Community Centre will be cosier on cold days after volunteers won a £35,000 grant for new insulation, draught-proofing, and replacement ceiling tiles. Solar panels will be installed on flat sections of the roof and electricity-saving insulation installed in the beer chiller room. The funding has been pieced together from sources including the Lottery, Energy Solutions Oxfordshire, the Pye Trust and developer funding. The improvements needed were identified in an energy audit carried out in 2024 by Oxford Brookes. Work will be complete by March. Danny Chivers from the Florence Park Community Association said: “As a local charity serving the community on a tight budget, spiralling energy costs pose a serious risk to our finances and so these improvements can’t come soon enough. Thousands of people attended meetings and events here in 2025.” More information about the Community Centre is available on its dedicated website.
Cumnor Hurst, a Site of Special Scientific Interest on the outskirts of Oxford, has been secured for the community after owners All Souls College accepted a bid from Cumnor Parish Council. The college had indicated its intention to dispose of the site, raising fears about continued public access. The SSSI is split into two units: the first was already managed by the Cumnor Hurst Charity, but All Souls owned the second. It is ‘Unit 2’ which is being sold for £71,000, an area of acid grassland and woodland grazed by Dexter cows. A public meeting on Monday discussed the next steps. Cumnor Parish Council has expressed its thanks to everyone who has pledged money to the purchase.

Bignell House ablaze on New Year‘s Eve (Oxfordshire Fire & Rescue Service).

Around the county

Fire crews from nine stations tackled a fire at a £3.6m country house just outside Bicester on New Year’s Eve. Bignell House in Chesterton was designed in the 1860s by William Wilkinson, the architect of Oxford’s Randolph Hotel and St Edward’s School. Oxfordshire Fire & Rescue Service called out crews from across central Oxfordshire to fight the fire, which was “well developed involving the first floor and roof”. They say they have been able to save a large part of the building. The house is currently unoccupied and no persons were injured.
Former prime minister David Cameron has applied to build “a modest-sized swimming pool” in the grounds of his house in Dean, near Chipping Norton. The planning application to West Oxfordshire District Council also includes an extension and garden room. An earlier application was withdrawn in 2020.
Harwell Campus lit up the sky on New Year's Day to celebrate its 80th anniversary. From 5pm to 9pm, the UK’s most powerful display laser shone from the centre of the iconic Diamond Light Source, creating ‘The Beam’, a vertical pillar of light in the night sky, visible across the county. RAF Harwell was built in 1935. Notable operations in WW2 included SOE flights, & the first gliders into France in advance of D-Day. In 1946 it became the Atomic Energy Research Establishment. It's now a major research site, home to 250 research organisations including the European Space Agency.
A new brewpub is set to open in Witney this month with a mission to support and work with ex-service personnel. Jason Bolger, who as a former brewer at Tap Social is no stranger to brewing with a social cause, will run the brewpub called Scarlet River with his partner Niki. While Jason has not served, his family has many (ex-) military members and both share a passion about helping veterans. The brewpub's name Scarlet River evokes both a poem about remembrance ('Where the Scarlet River Flows' by Jo Alexis-Hagues) and the couple’s children's names Scarlet and River. More in Oxford Drinker.
Thames Valley Police are appealing for dashcam footage and witnesses to a New Year’s Day collision on the A40 west of Witney, in which four people sustained serious injuries. The collision, between a red Honda CRV and a silver Vauxhall Corsa, took place at around 4.40pm. TVP say the location was “Astral Barrel Roundabout” (which we think is meant to be Asthall Barrow Roundabout at the west end of the Witney bypass).
Blenheim Palace conservators say that two of the names etched into the Great Hall roof have been successfully identified. They had appealed at the start of December for information that might explain a set of names graffitied into the roof. Local historian Liz Woolley linked the name F.R. Rainbow to Frederick Rainbow, the managing director of the Vacuum Cleaner & Transport Co. on Abingdon Road in the 1930s. The company hired out ‘Machine Carpet Beaters’ and later appears to have operated a removals business. The name G.T. Higgs, meanwhile, was identified by his grandson Ray, living in the USA. George Thomas Higgs ran an Oxford painting, decorating and building firm, which remained in the family until 1971. Blenheim is still keen to find out who other names might refer to.
A competition to reconstruct North Leigh Roman Villa in Minecraft has been judged, with young player Joe Raven announced as the winner. Judges from English Heritage and Blenheim Palace said they were delighted by the detail which entrants gave to their simulacra, with “colourful mosaics, statues and bunches of grapes, food-laden dining tables, stables, docks, and hypocausts”. All entrants received a Blenheim annual family pass.
St Ethelwold’s House in Abingdon, a retreat centre with an 800-year history, has successfully raised £70,000 for emergency structural repairs. The charity had to empty its reserves to meet the £140,000 cost of repairing rotten timbers. The Trustees say: “It has been an inspiring time, hearing about why St Eth’s is appreciated, and we will do our best to nourish the house, the garden and the spirit of the place for future generations.”

Cllr Gareth Epps delivering in the snow; Tories gather for the Carterton by-election; Cllr Anna Railton grits the Gasworks bridge; Greens assemble in Oxford East; and Labour in Northway.

Oxfordshire politics

Traditionally, the Tuesday newsletter hosts our politics section, but Parliament has been in recess. All MPs wished their constituents a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year so we'll take that as read.

It may all have been quiet on the home front, but Calum Miller, MP for Bicester & Woodstock, has been on the airwaves responding to the American invasion of Venezuela in his role as LibDem foreign affairs spokesperson. He wasted no time in condemning the actions of the US, saying:

“It's now clear that this was never about the interests of the Venezuelan people or the wider world. This is Trump serving his own interests and ego, making the world far more dangerous in the process. Starmer must convene the UN Security Council to hold Trump to account.”

So we'll stick a little more locally for our content. Oxford City Council posted their year in review (cute, very on-trend) but what is actually much funnier is the bloopers roll they also posted. Excellent work, Oxford City Council comms team.

Our councillors don't seem to have been napping much in Twixtmas, with many of them becoming #binfluencers. We've seen enthusiastic posts from wintry action days (Greens, Oxford East); councillors delivering leaflets in the frost, hopefully before letterboxes freeze up (LibDem county councillors Gareth Epps and Emily Smith); Cllr Anna Railton (Lab, Hinksey Park) continuing her admirable ‘you can just do it yourself’ campaign by gritting the Gasworks pipe bridge; Cllr David Henwood (IOA, Littlemore) on a MacGyver-style stakeout to catch the Littlemore Tyre Slasher; Cllr Brad Baines (Lab, Isis) declaring a “chilly session on the #labourdoorstep”; and Cllr Liam Walker (Con, Hanborough & Hailey) starting campaigning for the Carterton by-election because, yes, the never-ending bunfight that is Carterton Town Council has another vacancy. Have they considered replacing the council with an anarcho-syndicalist commune in which every resident takes it in turns to act as a sort of executive officer for the week?

Trains and buses

The RMT union has upped the ante in the dispute over East West Rail by threatening strike action on Chiltern Railways. The union is in dispute with Chiltern over plans to run Oxford–Milton Keynes services without guards, although the line itself has been ready since October 2024. RMT secretary Eddie Dempsey said: “We need a clear commitment from Chiltern that East West Rail services will not be Driver Only Operation and that a second safety-critical member of staff will be guaranteed. If Chiltern management continue to be unreasonable, we cannot rule out industrial action.” RMT staged a demonstration at Marylebone on Monday to draw attention to its stance. The stalemate over guards was first reported by the Clarion in September and has since been picked up by the national press.
An inflatable dinosaur costume, a box of fortune cookies and a bag of rubber ducks were among the unusual items left on Oxford’s buses last year. Oxford Bus Company put out a seasonal press release to encourage people to use the ‘NotLost’ facility on its website to reclaim their forgotten items.
Bus access to Banbury station has improved with the opening of a new bus stop, and improvements to bus routes to serve the station. Oxfordshire County Council says the changes will improve journeys between Banbury town centre, the rail station, Cherwell Heights, Bodicote, Longford Park and Chipping Norton. The bus stop and corresponding changes are part of a wider plan to improve access to Banbury railway station including new roundabout and footpath, plus drainage, surfacing, lighting, fencing and landscaping. The final phase, which involves a new drop off facility, is planned for the spring.

Recycling (and treecycling)

We don't know why so much of our content over Christmas has been focused on bins (does this make us binfluencers?) so we gave it its own section, we hope, not to be repeated.

From 14 January, you will need to book online to visit a household waste recycling centre. You will need proof of address, and yes, you can arrive by bike. (We checked.) Details here. And in good news for residents in Cherwell, they can finally put glass bottles in their recycling bin. Cllr Ian Middleton, Cherwell District Council, said: “This change provides further convenience and clarity on recycling, directly responding to resident requests." The scheme is expected to recycle 500-700 tonnes of glass per year. Bottle banks are to be removed in due course.

But what you really want to know is how to recycle your Christmas tree. First of all, remove all decorations: broken fairy lights and other small electrical items can be put out for recycling in a carrier bag and left on top of any bin on collection day. Artificial trees are accepted at recycling centres (but remember to book online).

Oxford City: Kerbside collections are on your green/brown bin day between Tuesday 13 January and Friday 13 February 2026. If you live in a flat or want to recycle your real tree sooner, you can take it to one of the Christmas tree collection points located across the city.
South Oxfordshire District Council: Put out with your brown bin if you have a garden waste subscription, or take to any tree collection point.
Vale of White Horse District Council: Put out with your brown bin if you have a garden waste subscription, or take to any tree collection point.
Cherwell District Council: Crews will be collecting trees from the kerbside from Tuesday 6 January, until and including Friday 16 January, on recycling collection day. Any trees over 5ft tall must be cut in half.
West Oxfordshire District Council: Put out on garden waste collection day between Monday 12 and Friday 23 January. The service is available to all households, including those without a garden waste licence. Please cut larger trees into 1 metre lengths to assist collection crews.

Notes from Clarion HQ

It might be a slow start to the year, but 2026 is already shaping up to be anything but quiet – with a decision on unitary councils, Botley Road reopening, and East West Rail finally starting. (Please?)

We’ll be previewing a few upcoming highlights in Friday’s newsletter. Anything in 2026 you’re looking forward to? Let us know by email (news@oxfordclarion.uk) or in the comments on Bluesky. Have a great week.