The Clarion, 11 November 2025

The Clarion? On a Tuesday?! We’ve been struggling to fit everything in of late, so on Friday we announced a move to a twice-a-week format. In this Tuesday edition you'll find news, politics, medieval riots and trains.

Our top stories

An extraordinary artwork is being created to explain the trials and tribulations of the Botley Road bridge saga and celebrate West Oxford. We caught up with artist Chris Shipton to hear more, and learned a lot about Oxford in the process.

Botley and the narrow bridge of art

Amidst the turmoil of the Botley Road bridge works, a remarkable artwork is being created, both to tell the story of the bridge and its complexities, and the rich history of West Oxford. Local artist Chris Shipton has quietly been creating artwork to adorn the pedestrian walkway between Oxford railway

Oxford ClarionOxford Clarion

Oxfordshire has been lined up as a hub to tackle the UK's R&D crisis. The Equinox partnership, led by the University of Oxford, is touted as “a national innovation and investment hub” with partners including Oxford Nanopore, Moderna, the EIT, and Siemens Healthineers. They say R&D and high-growth science companies are currently struggling to find backing in the UK.

The University says its first priority will be encouraging inward investment, “ensuring that Oxfordshire’s global reputation for scientific excellence and enterprise translates into shared local prosperity”. There are lots of corporate words in the press release and not much detail, but our take is that the interesting bit here is Oxford University, for the first time, seeking to bring together the titans of 21st century industry – right here in this county. Big news, no?

Racial abuse, sexual harassment, and a failure to ensure rowers’ health and well-being were all found at Oxford Brookes University Boat Club, according to an investigation commissioned after allegations of bullying. A “toughness sheet” with insults towards club members surfaced last year.

Law firm Pennington Manches Cooper described “an inward looking culture” and said there had been repeated attempts to interfere with their investigation. They said formal action could be taken against “multiple individuals” on grounds including duty of care and data protection. Documents posted to Reddit, said to be extracts from the report, also said land sales at their Cholsey boathouses should be investigated for conflicts of interest, and that a Boat Club bank account should be audited. Brookes says it is working with British Rowing to address issues raised.

Oxford marked Remembrance Sunday with a parade and a service at the War Memorial on St Giles. Wreaths were laid by the community in memory of fallen members of the armed forces. The parade was led by RSM James Massey from the Mercian Regiment and included representatives and cadets from the armed forces, Oxfordshire Fire and Rescue Service, the Oxford Nepalese community, and Girlguiding Oxford. Civic delegations attended from our twin cities of Grenoble, Leiden and Wrocław.

Lord Mayor of Oxford, Louise Upton, said: “Armistice Day and Remembrance Sunday give us a moment to reflect on the immense sacrifices made by so many in our armed forces. As we stand together in silence, we honour the courage and selflessness of those who choose to serve, to protect the freedoms we hold dear.”

Around the city

• Hundreds of people queued to be the first to see the new Sephora store in Oxford's Westgate, the 12th in the UK. Sephora is known for its high-end and trending beauty & fragrance offer, often being the first to introduce cutting edge brands to the UK.
• Santander bank will reopen its Carfax branch as a 5-storey ‘work café’ on 15 December. Co-working spaces and meeting rooms will be available free of charge. A temporary bank branch is open at Brookes University. The work café will combine hot-desking, events space, meeting rooms, and barista coffee with banking services and ATMs. The 1932 building was built on the site of the Swindlestock Tavern, where the St Scholastica riots of 1354 began. After students complained about the quality of the wine served by a C14th barista, one threw a quart pot at the landlord’s head – who happened to also be the Mayor of Oxford. The ensuing town vs gown riot saw 2000 men come to the aid of the townsmen: 62 students were killed. Eventually, the landlord/mayor was sent to the Tower of London by Edward III, and until 1825, his successors were forced to attend an annual mass for the dead.
• The Ashmolean has announced its 2026 calendar of events, including 'Aphrodite, the making of a Goddess'. Artist-in-residence Soma Surovi Jannat’s debut museum show will draw inspiration from the largest mangrove forest in the world, plus the Ashmolean collections, to address the climate crisis.
• Two independents on Oxford City Council have been censured for their behaviour. Saj Malik, of the Real Independents, and Amar Latif, of the Oxford Independent Group, were found to have engaged in “intimidating and insulting” behaviour at a City Council debate on Oxford’s traffic filters. A complaint lodged by council leader Cllr Susan Brown said that Cllr Malik’s behaviour (such as at 3h11m30 here) was “some of the most disgraceful behaviour I have seen… it was deeply unpleasant and came across as bullying, rude, misogynistic and unpleasant”. In both cases, the Hearing Panel agreed that the councillors’ actions were “intimidating, insulting, undermining and denigrating to officers and councillors”, but did not conclude that bullying had occurred. Another independent, David Henwood, was recently found to have engaged in bullying.
• Oxford charity Asylum Welcome is asking residents to place an orange light in their window during the Oxford Light Festival, 14-16 November. The light represents compassion for people fleeing war and persecution and is inspired by the colours of a lifebelt.
• Oxford has the fifth highest number of dirty public toilets according to a new report based on Google reviews. York, Bath and Cambridge topped the chart. Business Waste, who commissioned the survey, said this was “not only a public health concern, but also a disability accessibility issue”. Only Oxford, though, has a hotel in some former public toilets.
• Moths are being celebrated as pollinators with a new proposed installation in Oxford North's Canalside Park. Three bronze sculptures will emerge from a wildflower meadow. Each sculpture represents the invisible movements of a moth’s search for a flower to feed from and pollinate.

Around the county

• Utility companies will have to pay a daily fee to Oxfordshire County Council to dig up the county’s roads. The “lane rental scheme”, which already operates in London and other counties, aims to incentivise speedy completion and working at off-peak times. The Clarion first reported that OCC was considering the scheme in June 2023; the plan has now been approved by central Government. Income must be reinvested in highway improvements by law. Cllr Andrew Gant called it “an incentive to complete the job as expeditiously as possible”. Lane Rental Schemes in other areas have exempted Network Rail from charges, which is perhaps just as well, as the Botley Road railway bridge closure would have been charged at £3m for 1,239 days.
• A Government policy change could lead to Vale of White Horse and South Oxfordshire’s local plan being reconsidered, according to the leaders of the two councils. The plan was recently rejected for failing to co-operate with Oxford City Council, but since then the Government has softened its stance. Housing Minister Matthew Pennycook has told planning inspectors that “expectations with respect to the Duty to Cooperate should be proportionate to the context in which plans in the existing system are being prepared”. South and Vale say the refusal should be rethought in this light. In a letter to the planning inspectors who turned down the plan, they say “we are ahead of target on affordable homes for those in housing need from Oxford; we have fast-tracked over 350 Oxford housing register applications”.
• Planning approval has been granted for the £44m Wootton Science Park, south-west of Oxford. The masterplan delivers carbon-efficient lab and workspace for SMEs and tech companies, with landscaped areas, secure bike storage, a bistro and gym. Wootton is accessed by the A420 or A34 and is around a 6-mile cycle or drive from Oxford. (It is also very convenient for the Besselsleigh Christmas Lights.) Our Bluesky followers were quick to point out the challenge of cycling that route, and hoped developer contributions to make it safer would be forthcoming.
• Plans for a solar farm near Farmoor have been turned down by Vale of White Horse District Council. Planning officers said it was “inappropriate development in the Green Belt” and that it would harm the “strong undeveloped open and rural landscape character”. Red House Solar Farm was envisaged as a 49.9MW solar farm, “enough to meet the annual electricity needs of 9,000 homes per year” according to its promoters. The project had been resubmitted last year after an earlier plan was withdrawn in 2024.
• The much larger Botley West Solar Farm is now in the final days of its examination by the national Planning Inspectorate; Bicester & Woodstock MP Calum Miller has recently tabled parliamentary questions about its funding and financial viability.

Oxfordshire politics

Hi politics fans, and boy (/girl/whatever you choose), do we have a bumper section for you this week! We've moved the politics section to a Tuesday, because MPs' constituency days are usually Fridays which historically means it missed our newsletter cut-off. So we hope that by slotting this section in mid-week your political news is fresher.

But before we get underway, check out this picture of the Poppy Ride for the British Legion in Parliament. Each MP was challenged to ride as far as they can in five minutes. Does Oxfordshire have the fittest MPs in the country? Or just the most competitive? Hat tip to all that competed, particularly Calum Miller who came in 4th overall, and Anneliese Dodds as 4th lady.

• Banbury MP Sean Woodcock is encouraging the town to apply for the new UK Town of Culture competition, saying it could “restore a real sense of pride and belonging in the place we call home”. The winning town will be awarded £3.5m to deliver a cultural programme during the summer of 2028. He visited Graf, a local company specialising in harvesting rainwater harvesting and storm water management. (We went down a rabbit hole on this one in view of our last long read on planting to use your garden to help prevent floods. So we're going to link to their super interesting range of unusual water butts. No, really.) In Parliament he was celebrating the end of the Committee Stage of the Devolution & Community Engagement Bill which he's been working on. He took part in the Poppy Ride for the British Legion, and a run for Movember. Locally, he has taken the County Council to task over how long it's taking to fix Banbury's roads. He's been out on the doors in a very autumnal looking Chipping Norton.
• Bicester & Woodstock MP Calum Miller planted a poppy in the parliamentary Garden of Remembrance, and took part in Woodstock's Remembrance Day ceremony. He's still campaigning for an underpass on London Road. He is hiring for a comms person, which might explain why his update this week is quite short.
• Witney MP Charlie Maynard was in Cambridge (in his capacity as a member of the Business & Trade Select Committee, we hasten to add) discussing economic growth, unaffordable housing, infrastructure and Brexit. Sounds familiar? He took part in the Poppy Ride for the British Legion and was at Remembrance Sunday in Witney. Here's his October round up.
• Oxford East MP Anneliese Dodds, in football news, supported the EFL Week of Action on community impact and the #3Up campaign. In Parliament, she urged the government to act on the war in Sudan. She shared Oxford East's postal workers’ innovation to prioritise medical letters in the hope it would be adopted nationwide (well done to the posties). In the constituency she was grilled by Oxford Brookes politics students, visited community organisation the Jungle to find out more about its work, and St Andrew's Primary School to see its Bikeability scheme. She planted a poppy in the Parliamentary Garden of Remembrance, and was at Remembrance Day in Oxford. She was out on the doors with an all-star team in Churchill ward (excellent autumnal canvassing photo).
• Oxford West & Abingdon MP Layla Moran visited businesses on the Botley Road, saying goodwill payments from Network Rail had been received but they need to stick to their schedule. She gave a speech at the Remembering Gaza ceremony in London, and planted a poppy in the Parliamentary Garden of Remembrance. As Chair of the Commons Health Select Committee, she called on the MHRA to crack down on illegal weight loss jabs, and on Health Secretary Wes Streeting to investigate the DES scandal (an anti-miscarriage drug linked to cancer). In slightly awkward news, she celebrated World Vegan Day with vegan cheese, but a jumper bearing the word ‘honey’ (no, you tell her).
• Didcot & Wantage MP Olly Glover in Parliament spoke out about cyclists facing headlight glare on rural roads (Highway Code change incoming?). He signed a letter to the Home Secretary asking for long term certainty for Ukrainian residents in the UK. This week’s campaigns have included local sporting facilities and the idea of a ‘Retiree Red Phone’ hotline, after figures showed 80m calls to HMRC have gone unanswered over the last decade: a local elderly constituent reported waiting 40 minutes without being connected, and it was only after Glover’s intervention that HMRC finally responded. In Parliament he asked for statutory paternity and maternity pay to match the National Living Wage. Locally, he encouraged residents to engage with the consultation on the mega reservoir due to be built in his constituency. (Reservoir primers here.)
• Henley & Thame MP Freddie van Mierlo this week celebrated 10,000 pieces of casework since being elected. Here’s some (content warning: IVF, maternal healthcare). He met with local cycling groups in Sonning Common and Goring to push for routes away from main roads and dangerous traffic. He received a reply from the Minister for Heath on newborn screening for spinal muscular atrophy (do read it in full; it is nuanced and reducing it to a sentence would be unhelpful). He's tabled a motion to end what he calls the ‘postcode lottery’ of IVF, saying Oxfordshire has amongst the worst provision in the country. He attended a Remembrance Day service in Henley. On an entirely different note, he celebrated 75 years since the House of Commons was rebuilt after the Second World War. (Your historical rabbit hole on this one features the miraculous survival of a statue of Richard the Lionheart, starts here and continues with this video.)
• Thames Valley Police & Crime Commissioner Matthew Barber, we'll say it again, is either very good at comms, very busy, or both. Edited highlights: He spoke at Thames Valley Police's Retail Crime Conference in Oxford, about rural crime at a farming conference at Blenheim Palace, to Talk TV about the Government's plans to scrap short sentences, and at Stokenchurch Parish Council (possibly more viewers than Talk TV). He also hung out at the Vale Community Impact pop-up cafe, but took aim at the Vale of White Horse Equalities Roadshow as a waste of money. He's been publicising his new campaign on vehicle crime, with the slogan ‘Tool theft is job theft’ (and the comms professionals in our team tip our hats on that one). Visiting the House of Lords, he discussed changes to the law on ‘dodgy’ shops (he didn't mention Harry Potter shops, but...?). Like seemingly every other southern Oxfordshire politician, he was out on the doors in the Ridgeway ward. Here's his week's recap. The Labrador pics get better each week.

Council reorganisation

It’s cheese time! The competing proposals for new unitary councils have been published, ready to submit to Government.

• First out the blocks was the ‘Two Councils’ plan from the rural districts: one new council comprising Oxford, Cherwell & West Oxon, and another with South, Vale & West Berkshire. A 149-page document (plus appendices) sets out their case, saying two councils would be “the right size to be effective and viable and small enough to be representative and responsive… strong local accountability with financial sustainability”, claiming a £59.8m pa saving. A key point of the argument is that West Berkshire will not be sustainable without being absorbed into a larger authority: it claims a single Oxfordshire council “would do nothing to secure improvements across West Berks… which would remain with significant challenges around scale”. (Clarion aside: and this is an Oxfordshire problem how…?) The document takes aim at the competing three-council proposal saying “the rationale is not clear beyond a desire to build a strong growth hub around Oxford”.
• The County Council proposal for a single unitary claims to be the only one with “the scale, stability and resilience to withstand future financial challenges”, saving £63.3m per year. It warns that the other models could be hobbled by including financially troubled West Berkshire, and that splitting up social care between the councils would be risky: “our proposal is laser-focused on protecting and improving these critical services”. Responding to worries that a single council would be too big, it claims it would have the financial headroom to provide “an effective neighbourhood working model”. The prospectus is without doubt the glossiest of the three. (Slightly spoiled by the wrong caption on p6, which is actually Burford, not Hook Norton. Note the Greene King signage – a GK pub would be chased out of town in Hooky…)
• Finally, there’s the City Council plan for three councils including a ‘Greater Oxford’ (Oxfordopolis?). It promises “authorities of the right scale and character to meet Oxfordshire’s diverse needs”, with a relaxation of the Green Belt resulting in 40,000 new dwellings, and savings at £48.6m per year. The main message here is one of growth, quantified at 65,000 more jobs and £43.1bn economic benefit. It claims the two councils plan would “prevent the city from expanding on three sides to meet its own housing and economic needs”, which is just maybe saying the quiet part out loud.
• A meeting of parish councils in Oxford’s Green Belt saw unanimous opposition to the ‘Greater Oxford’ plans, as well as some enthusiasm for a single-county unitary; a smaller number preferred the two-unitary option. At the Wheatley meeting, attended by more than half the affected councils as well as local MPs Calum Miller and Freddie van Mierlo, discussions included maintaining representative democracy within larger councils, ensuring financial sustainability, and strengthening the role of local communities.
• How do you solve a problem like West Berkshire? The council for Newbury and Hungerford would be merged into South Oxfordshire and Vale of White Horse under two of the three proposals, with its existing unitary status touted as a head-start. But details are emerging of the parlous state of West Berkshire Council’s finances, with its reserves dipping below the “financially sustainable” yardstick and Government support being sought. The Newbury Weekly News reports that it is spending over £3m a year on care for four children.

University and research

• Researchers at Oxford Brookes have challenged stereotypes about the traditions surrounding the aye-aye, an endangered Madagascan lemur.
  For decades, it has been portrayed in popular narratives as a “demonic” animal feared and killed by rural communities. The researchers documented a spectrum of community practices: from rituals where the animal is killed and displayed to appease its spirit, to funerals reflecting beliefs that the aye-aye embodies the spirit of an ancestor. Dr Eppley, Chief Conservation Officer for Wildlife Madagascar, elaborated: “We shouldn't oversimplify cultural narratives for conservation. Promoting beliefs that killing the aye-aye brings misfortune can backfire, fuelling conflict between conservationists and local communities.”
• An Oxford student has been acquitted of damaging Stonehenge by spraying it with orange powder in support of Just Stop Oil. Niamh Lynch, a geography student at Regent's Park College, cited "reasonable excuse" in her defence.
• Oxford University Press is to acquire Sigmund Freud’s publisher Karger. The company was founded in Berlin in 1890 but relocated to Basel in 1937, and publishes almost 100 science journals. OUP CEO Nigel Portwood said it had been “stewarded carefully by the Karger family over many decades”.
• Oxford’s first female doctor has been commemorated with a plaque at 89 Iffley Rd. Dr Elizabeth Baker was also known for riding a bike given to her by William Morris. The new plaque is on St Hilda’s College accommodation, opposite a plaque to Roger Bannister.
• Oxford Brookes has won an award from the British Council for its partnership with Helwan University in Egypt, which is transforming hybrid vehicle technology education and driving clean energy innovation.

Trains and buses

• Proposals to reopen Ardley station on the Chiltern railway line, between Bicester and Banbury, have moved forward with Oxfordshire County Council earmarking funds for a business case. The station would serve new housing at Heyford Park, with the intention of attracting developer funding. Cllr Gareth Epps (LibDem, Deddington) said he had met Chiltern Railways to discuss the proposal, which would reopen a station closed in 1963. He said: “With huge development applications it’s essential we get to work now. Holding developers to fund public transport is essential to prevent gridlock.”
• “Boxes” for the new Botley Road railway bridge are being assembled close to the site. The structures will form part of the southern abutment when the new bridge is installed in early February. Becket Street car park and Botley Road itself have been used as work sites to construct the boxes. Other current work includes building the station-side approach for the new footbridge across the road. Network Rail says it has had to temporarily close some of the cycle parking to make room; this work is due to continue until 7 December.

Events extra

Friday’s newsletter is where you’ll find our pick of what’s on. But sometimes we miss things, so here’s a brief supplement:

• 90 Years of Arvo Pärt. Music at Oxford’s festival honouring the Estonian minimalist starts today.
• Andrew Dilnot in Jericho. The author of the seminal report on social care, in conversation at St Barnabas tonight.

Notes from Clarion HQ

And to think we were worried we couldn’t fill a second newsletter. Thanks for your support as we settle into the new routine. We’ll be back on Friday with more news, events, independent media and much more – see you then.