The Clarion, 10 February 2026

Let joy be unconfined! The trains are back. We have everything you need to know about county and city budgets, plus toilets, a furore over a Chinese university and a grave situation in Banbury. Happy Tuesday.

This week’s long reads

Today is Budget Day for Oxfordshire. Right now, the council chamber at County Hall – shortly to be redeveloped into a restaurant and hotel – is full of councillors poring over 50 long documents to agree the year’s spending. In a long read, we look at both county and city budgets, and ask – is it a case of deckchairs on the Titanic?

Budgets 2026: deckchairs on the Titanic?

Oxfordshire’s councils’ days might be numbered – but the cheques still have to be signed, bills paid, and council tax collected. As connoisseurs of Clarion cheese will know, the county, city and district councils are all set to be replaced by ‘unitary’ councils of as yet undetermined shape. So although

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This week’s top stories

Trains are running south of Oxford again following installation of the new Botley Road bridge. The first passenger train to cross was Monday's southbound 0520 to London Paddington. The north (station side) walkway is also back in operation. Giles Clark from Network Rail said:

“Completing this phase of work on schedule is a significant milestone for the Oxfordshire Connect programme, and I’m grateful to everyone who played a part in making it happen. These improvements are essential to keeping passengers moving safely and reliably, and they lay the groundwork for the major upgrades still to come.

“I’d like to thank local residents, businesses and passengers for their patience while we carried out this complex work, and I’m pleased that the walkway diversion and railway lines are now fully open again. We remain firmly on track for our next major milestone, reopening Botley Road in August 2026.”

Now that the bridge is in place, the focus shifts to reinstating the highway, including construction of a new subterranean structure to replace the notorious Victorian brick arch – the principal cause of the project delays. A new concrete slab, below the road level, will control groundwater and road drainage. Finally, both the road itself and the cycle/pedestrian routes will be constructed: surfacing, signage, lighting and painting.

A 37-year old Oxford man has been arrested on modern slavery grounds, following a police swoop on a road where 1000 parking tickets have been issued in under five years. Thames Valley Police targeted automotive businesses at Pettiwell (Garsington) and Littleworth (Wheatley).

A drone was sent up as part of the operation, which identified several people running away from police as they entered the site. Three were found hiding in the boots of cars; six adults were handed to immigration officers. Two were found locked in a small, windowless room at the back of a garage. The 37-year old has been bailed pending further enquiries. A closure order has been placed on one of the business premises, while a Proceeds of Crime Act application has been made and granted.

Also involved in the operation were the Driver & Vehicle Standards Agency, which closed down MOT testing centres for failing to meet standards; the DVLA, who clamped five untaxed vehicles and seven with non-compliant plates; and Oxfordshire County Council, which issued several parking tickets.

Much of low-lying Oxfordshire is underwater after incessant rain, with flood warnings in force on the River Ray (the tributary of the Cherwell through Islip) and alerts on the Thames, Cherwell, Thame, Evenlode and Windrush.

In the city, the towpath south of Fiddler’s Island (Medley) is closed, as is the path south of Iffley Lock. Red boards (‘do not navigate’) are up at every lock on the Thames. The lower level of Seacourt Park & Ride is closed. Oxford Sewage Treatment Works has now been discharging continuously for five days, and every major river around Oxfordshire is affected by sewage outfall.

Around the city

• The Oxfam Bookshop on St Giles, the charity’s first ever dedicated bookshop, could be closed. Landlords Regent’s Park College have applied to convert the premises into a Middle Common Room for graduate student use. The college says its current MCR is “located underground and accessed solely via a narrow staircase, has no windows for natural light or ventilation, and is wholly unsuitable for a community of more than 150 members”, and that the City Council’s policy on protecting retail frontage does not extend to St Giles.
• The New Theatre is proposing to replace its exterior signage and lighting, saying the current lettering is “increasingly ineffective in its primary role as a landmark identifier… the heavy, block-style sans-serif typeface suffers from significant visual distortion from the narrow George Street corridor”. The new signage is based on the typography in the theatre’s 1934 opening souvenir programme, a ‘refined’ version of the then contemporary Gill Sans. The planning application also envisages extending the pavement canopy to run the full length of the building, plus new lighting throughout.
• A BMW driver has been jailed after being convicted of causing serious injury by dangerous driving in Oxford. In October 2023, Omar Faruq was recorded driving along the Eastern Bypass at over 100mph in an attempt to escape from police. Losing control of the car, he hit a black Volkswagen Touran being driven by a female driver with her six children: two girls aged 11 and 5, and a 9-year-old boy sustained extensive serious injuries, including broken legs, dislocation of a hip and a thigh fracture and lacerations. He has been sentenced to two years and four months.
• Oxford Eye Hospital has unveiled a newly refurbished waiting area. New seating, artwork and colour-coded designs featuring scenes from across Oxford have created a more welcoming, accessible space that is easier for patients with eye conditions to navigate.
• Three schools are to install energy efficiency measures including rooftop solar panels, battery storage and LED lighting, thanks to interest-free energy efficiency loans from Oxfordshire County Council. St Ebbe’s in Oxford, St Swithun’s in Kennington and William Fletcher in Yarnton will invest over £140,000 in the measures. Amanda Giles at St Swithun’s said: "We have lowered our carbon footprint. Our eco council is becoming a great role model – sharing knowledge on clean energy with students."

Around the county

• Local charity Autism Family Support Oxfordshire has announced that it is to close as a registered charity on 31 March, unless a funder, organisation or benefactor steps forward. The charity provides parent support, youth groups and holiday clubs for over 4,000 families. In a statement, the charity said it was “deeply grateful to supporters, donors, staff, volunteers, and partners over the past 48 years. We know how how deeply this news will be felt by families we have had the privilege to support.”
• A developer has applied for 475 new houses at Heyford Park, the new town being built around a disused airfield in North Oxfordshire – over and above the 9,000 homes already proposed for the site. Richborough are putting forward a site to the southeast of the existing settlement, separate to plans for the airfield by Dorchester Living.
       Richborough’s site is adjacent to Camp Road, one of the main approaches to Heyford Park. The developers claim “a landscape-first approach” and promise the standard 35% affordable housing. Land for community use is included, extra care dwellings, and two “mobility hubs” (bus stops). Houses would be up to three storeys tall. A bridleway running along the edge of the site would be upgraded, with the main path retained for horse riders and a shared cycleway/footpath alongside. The main street through the development would have a 3m cycle track on each side. An outline planning application is with Cherwell.
• Campaigners against Peking University taking over the former Open University HQ at Foxcombe Hall, Boars Hill, say they have served notice on Vale of White Horse District Council. The site was given planning permission in 2022, but the Friends of Boars Hill have raised security concerns. The application sought “change of use from a non-residential educational institution to a residential university campus” with 60 student bedrooms, a dining hall, campus cafe and shop. The Peking University HSBC Business School would have “links with the Shenzhen Special Economic Zone of China”.
       Citing the controversy over the new Chinese Embassy in London, FoBH argue the 2022 decision is now out of date, saying that “the application is progressing toward approval without confirmation of any national security review”. They believe nearby tech industries could be vulnerable to surveillance. FoBH spokesman Mike Dalgleish said: “We feel that in the case of this very contentious application, the Vale of White Horse council should exercise every possible discretion to demonstrate a commitment to democratic process and listening to local residents, by agreeing to meet with us.”
• A car and van trader in Abingdon has been sentenced to 18 months’ custody, after having been found by Trading Standards to have reduced the mileage on six second-hand vans before selling them on Auto Trader. Cllr Jenny Hannaby for Oxfordshire County Council said: “Vehicle clocking misleads customers making a significant financial decision. Our trading standards team is here to protect residents from rogue traders and will take similar action against anyone found to be engaging in offending of this nature.”
• Following a consultation on spending a penny, West Oxfordshire District Council is to close half its public toilets, and upgrade the remaining half to include “a modern, gender-neutral layout with individual cubicles, improved disabled access, and better lighting and ventilation”. Payment will be by coins or card. All six of the remaining toilets, in Witney, Burford, Woodstock, Chipping Norton, Bampton and Carterton, are situated next to free WODC car parks where no coin or card payment is required (except for Bampton, which is free on-street parking run by the County Council).
• Community organisations across South Oxfordshire will receive funding for projects that improve residents’ quality of life. Grant awards include refurbishing a playground in Wheatley, e-bike chargers at the Earth Trust, and solar panels on Holton Village Hall. Alison Sercombe, Wheatley Parish Council said: “Wheatley’s Recreation Ground was last refurbished in 2007. This is an exciting project which will deliver both physical and imaginative play for the next generation of children, family members, and carers and be an asset to the village.”
• West Oxfordshire District Council says it is cracking down on fly-tipping with investment in more patrols, faster response to tip-offs and more enforcement action. In 2025, the Council received 1,754 reports of littering and fly-tipping offences.
• There's a grave situation in Banbury.* The Town Council has applied for planning permission for 3000 more plots on farmland next to the existing Hardwick Hill Cemetery. The site is adjacent to a proposed development of 150 homes. (* We will keep using this pun until it dies of exhaustion.)
• A West Oxfordshire district councillor has been reinstated by the local Liberal Democrat party after police dropped an investigation into allegations of coercive control. Adam Clements, councillor for Milton-under-Wychwood, had been suspended last June.
• Cheese news: The ‘Ridgeway Council’ proposal to merge Oxfordshire’s southern districts with West Berkshire has again been disputed by neighbouring Reading, whose council wants to take over parts of West Berkshire itself. It has designs on Tilehurst, the suburb that is the last stop before Reading station. Reading Borough Council says: “What was once an entirely logical boundary line drawn to separate fields, now splits communities. Residents just across the border understandably consider themselves as belonging to a vibrant, dynamic, economically successful and culturally diverse town [Reading].” Leader Liz Terry added: “The Government has confirmed that it retains the option to modify any of the Oxfordshire proposals following this consultation. Reading Borough Council is encouraged to submit its representation, which we now intend to do.”

Oxfordshire politics

With MPs increasingly posting video content, we have fewer selfies to post. We miss the days of Moran with a giant yellow spade, or van Mierlo next to a cow. If any MPs’ staff are reading this, you know what to do! (We're laughing with you, not at you. Honest.)

• Banbury MP Sean Woodcock in Parliament called Iran “malign and malevolent”, asking the Minister a very friendly question on working with Jordan. He was on BBC's Politics South talking about immigration, and met with the Defence Secretary John Healy to talk about the Armed Forces Parliamentary Scheme. Locally he attended Banbury Museum’s Open Day, now that the budgetary Sword of Damocles has been removed.
• Bicester & Woodstock MP Calum Miller, at the time of writing, had literally nothing on his social media this week. Can someone please turn the internet in Bicester off and on again? Thanks. (Late-breaking news: A final check picked up that he wants the Government to intervene over the fate of Briton Jimmy Lai, imprisoned in China.)
• Witney MP Charlie Maynard is angry with Thames Water again, this time because sewage backed up in to the Blake Primary School: “This is the fourth time the school has seen closures since mid-November, and children, staff and parents are suffering. This is on Thames Water. They are not spending the money needed on essential repairs. The Government need to get a grip by taking the company into Special Administration and overhauling how it is run so that it properly serves customers.” Keeping with the school theme, he attended a business breakfast at Burford School, and visited Aspris Ridgeway School in Shrivenham. In non-school news, he's been talking about potholes and getting more of them fixed. In Parliament, he spoke up on the subject of Indefinite Leave to Remain, and warned that current legislation risks creating indentured servitude. (The video is a tough watch.)

• Oxford East MP Anneliese Dodds continued to raise the alarm over the plight of civilians in Sudan. She posted this excellent throwback photo of her campaigning for the Oxford Living Wage in 2017 and we wish we'd used it for our article on the subject. She demanded safeguards on AI, citing "3 million disgusting nudified images were produced by Grok in just 11 days". This call was posted in multiple places including *checks notes* X, the home of Grok. Finally, on a local note, she took the fight to the County Council over the proposed reduction in the 3A bus service, as first reported in the Clarion.

• Oxford West & Abingdon MP Layla Moran held a surgery in the Waterways area of North Oxford, which we are reliably informed was standing room only: the topic was service fees from housing associations and service fees for leaseholders by property management companies, with a representative of the Housing Ombudsman in attendance. There's a petition, because of course there is. And because there is a Y in the day, she is angry with Thames Water – in Parliament she said that the PM should “deny the £16bn rescue deal that is about to cross his desk and establish a public benefit company”.
• Didcot & Wantage MP Olly Glover has done his own helpful roundup on Facebook, which included looking at flood prevention in Milton Park, and new homes in East Hanney where new houses have sewage coming into their homes when it rains heavily. (There seems to be a heavy Thames Water theme to this week. We guess when it rains, sh*t happens…) In the debate on Indefinite Leave to Remain, he spoke up for international collaboration to support local space, biotech and robotics businesses. And he asked the Minister what was being done to support victims of domestic violence (this encouraging exchange is worth a watch). Finally he went on Radio 5 Live (listen here, from an hour in) to discuss the Mandelson scandal and the LibDem kryptonite of tuition fees.
• Henley & Thame MP Freddie van Mierlo has been in Fight Mode this week. First is a genuinely extraordinary letter to the leader of the Green Group on the County Council, after they called for cancellation of the Watlington Relief Road; he says they campaigned in support of it in 2025. (Tl;dr: traffic hotspot, more homes coming, very expensive road, environmentally sensitive area. We wrote a longer version here.) He thinks Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor should be removed from the line of succession, and is demanding the Government stop plans to build on Chalgrove Airfield. Unsurprisingly, minister for housing Matthew Pennycook said no. (Our long read on Chalgrove Airfield started with an open mind and ended up with the conclusion it may be the worst place to put a new town in the whole of Oxfordshire.)

• Thames Valley Police & Crime Commissioner Matthew Barber has written his own handy roundup – a reminder he does look after the entire Thames Valley, not just Oxfordshire. In this week's highlights, he's been discussing rural crime in Uffington, joined a meeting of the Didcot Community Forum, spoke at the Oxfordshire Schools Safeguarding Conference, and has been out delivering in Stanford.

And finally, we’ll just leave this here:

University and research

• Species’ ability to migrate across latitudes aids their survival when responding to climate change, according to a study of the fossil record of coastal marine animals over the last 535 million years. Oxford's Cooper Malanoski and Erin Saupe led an international team of researchers in the study. They found that fossil species living on coastlines with north-south orientations were less likely to go extinct than those with east-west orientations, because they could more easily track their environmental niches by shifting their latitudinal ranges as the earth warmed or cooled. This effect was found to be especially strong during mass extinctions or ancient periods of extreme climate warming. These findings may help to identify vulnerable marine species today, and inform conservation priorities.
• Oxford University Hospitals Trust has been shortlisted for a digital award recognising its new end-to-end process for tracking radiology scans.
• A new machine that treats tumours using an ultrasound (HIFU) to heat and destroy targeted cells has been installed in the Churchill Hospital. This non-invasive treatment has potential not just for tumours but other uses such as treating fibroids and improved diagnostics.
• Sir Walter Raleigh's 1614 History of the World has been donated to Oriel College in its 700th anniversary year. Raleigh wrote it in the Tower of London, but this edition was cancelled by James I. Oriel previously sold its Shakespeare First Folio for £3.5m in 2003.
• Quantum news: Oxford University will co-lead a five-year project to create ‘Distributed and secure quantum computation’ – the foundations of a quantum internet, as part of a £10m co-operation with Japan announced during the Prime Minister’s visit last week. The project is one of three, and will see Oxford working with the Universities of Tokyo, Edinburgh, Manchester and Sussex, using ion-trap nodes, photonic links and privacy-preserving protocols to enable ultra-secure communication and faster collaborative processing. David Lucas of Oxford’s Department of Physics said: “Similar to how the internet connects classical computers, quantum advances depend on networking quantum processors together. The profound scientific and engineering challenges demand a unified approach and international collaboration.” (The Oxford Clarion – always first with the news that can pass through both of your letterboxes at once.)
• Oxford Professor of Astrophysics, founder of Zooniverse and presenter of BBC’s The Sky at Night, Chris Lintott, warns the Government against cuts to fundamental research in an article for the University of Oxford. Lintott makes the pragmatic economic argument that this work supports jobs directly, as well as through a wider supply chain and capability base plus foreign investment (15 detectors on the James Webb Space Telescope were built in the UK). Investment also supports Britain’s position in the international science community, where we ‘punch above our weight’, our ability to shape projects and get science time on international telescopes and facilities like the particle collider at CERN, Switzerland. He concludes: “In a period where money is undoubtedly tight everywhere, we need to remember that spending money on fundamental sciences like astrophysics is an investment, one with short-term benefits to communities across the UK, and long-term pay-offs.”
• The former Director of the Ashmolean, and Emeritus Fellow of Worcester College, Sir Christopher White, has died. Under his leadership, the Museum’s first education officer and volunteer lecturers were appointed, and he oversaw the creation of the Ashmolean's lecture theatre.
• Another Oxford college is opening a visitor cafe. St Edmund Hall, on Queen's Lane, is open to the public 10-4. Its gardener's store will reopen as a cafe this spring, joining Magdalen's Riverside Terrace, Wolfson's cafe, and Mansfield's Crypt, among others.

Trains and buses

• The Oxford Tube coach service is cutting some services from 9 March. Daily Oxford–London journeys will go down from 71 to 65, with a less frequent service in mid-morning and after 8pm. But there’s good news for West Oxon passengers, with the Carterton/Witney–London coach now running at weekends. The White City stop (for the Central Line) will be replaced by a stop near Acton Main Line (for the Elizabeth Line). Baker Street stops will be dropped on all but the two morning “express” services.
• Plans to create a new bus lane approaching the busy Milton Heights interchange, near Didcot, have gone out for consultation. The new lane would be built from the Steventon Lights junction to the A34 roundabout.
• Stagecoach is speeding up bus journeys between Bicester and Oxford, with the S5 service omitting most stops along Banbury Road. The S5A route will be merged into the main S5, and fewer late-night services will run on Friday and Saturday.
• Reduced congestion on the Abingdon Road is allowing buses to Reading, Wallingford and Abingdon to be sped up, according to Oxford Bus Company. Confirming its timetable changes for 22 February (previously reported in the Clarion), OBC’s Luke Marion said: “We’re introducing a significant amount of service improvements across our network, which has been made possible thanks to the initial positive impact of temporary congestion charging and the large uptake of free Park & Ride travel.”

Notes from Clarion HQ

Here’s an interesting tactic by the Manchester Mill, the poster boy/girl for independent news. As regular Clarionettes will know, the BBC funds free reporters for papers like the Manchester Evening News and Oxford Mail, because owners Reach (annual profits: £99m) and Newsquest (£34m) would otherwise be too impecunious to employ them. The papers then take this licence fee-funded copy, and put it behind a paywall. The Mill has (rightly) decided this isn’t on, and is now publishing the paywalled articles for free on its own site. We don’t have any plans to follow suit, but should you really want to read the OM’s paywalled BBC-funded articles, megacorp rivals Reach are now, oddly, posting them for free on their Oxfordshire Live Facebook page.

We'll be back on Friday with our Valentine's Day (sort of) edition. It's on Saturday. Don't say we didn't warn you!