The Clarion, 20 January 2026

It is cold, yesterday was Blue Monday, but the news is hot, hot, hot. Right this way for a governmental slap on the wrist for Oxford City, life-saving Low Traffic Neighbourhoods and so much more…

This week’s long read

Are solar panels in space a real possibility, or just pie in the sky? Continuing our series profiling Oxfordshire’s most inventive businesses, we visit Space Solar at the Harwell Campus, and find out more about their plans to put solar panels beyond the reach of any district council’s planning committee…

Space Solar – power from above

We’ve written about the emerging climate crisis and the 250 years of Oxford science as evidence. We’ve written about its impact on our gardens. We’ve written how renewable solar energy, one part of the remedy, is planned on a large scale in Oxfordshire but is facing challenges

Oxford ClarionOxford Clarion

This week’s top stories

The Government has told Oxford City Council it thinks its response on postponing elections was unclear – and that “in the absence of a clear request”, Government will assume May elections should proceed.

Postponement had been mooted in the light of the upcoming reorganisation of England’s councils. After a special meeting last week, in which most councillors said elections should go ahead, leader Cllr Susan Brown wrote to the Secretary of State saying “holding elections this year represents an additional burden on already stretched resources” but also that “the majority of councillors felt that elections should take place”.

This response was criticised by opposition councillors, with Green group leader Chris Jarvis calling it “a series of spurious reasons to deny the people of Oxford a say”. The Secretary of State Steve Reed has now replied to the City Council asking for clarification:

“There are a small number of councils who have set out how postponement would release essential capacity to facilitate reorganisation, but did not make a clear request of whether or not they want their elections postponed. Your representation is one of these. Please clarify your position by 10am on Tuesday 20 January.”

The Clarion understands that alternative models for the shape of Oxfordshire have been mooted within Government. Oxfordshire’s local councils have submitted three competing reorganisation plans: a single, whole-Oxfordshire council; a north/south split; and a three-way split with an enlarged Oxford City.

But with smaller neighbouring councils in financial trouble, Oxfordshire’s councils unable to agree, and the balance of power within Oxford City uncertain after May, other possibilities could come into play – particularly given the enthusiasm for anchoring Oxford’s booming economy within the Oxford–Cambridge Corridor. One option could see Oxfordshire remain 80% intact, but with the Vale of White Horse hived off, in whole or part, to form a new council with West Berkshire and Swindon. (Your Clarion cheese correspondents think this an outside possibility, but an interesting illustration of the febrile climate.)

Cowley’s Low Traffic Neighbourhoods have saved 30 collisions over three years, according to the latest casualty data. Oxfordshire’s Coalition for Healthy Streets & Active Travel analysed collision reports both within the LTNs and on the ‘boundary roads’.

The Cowley LTNs were implemented in April 2021, after sporadic coronavirus lockdowns between March 2020 and March 2021. The main local collision site had been the junction of Rymers Lane with Cornwallis Road and Littlehay Road, with 10 casualties in the five pre-LTN years, two of them serious; since the LTNs were installed, there has not been a collision here. Oxfordshire Liveable Streets’ Siobhann Mansel-Pleydell said:

“This analysis shows what’s possible when we intentionally design places, from traffic movement to street layouts, around people’s wellbeing: fewer people hurt, and safer everyday journeys for everyone."

CoHSAT believes this data shows that implementing three planned Low Traffic Neighbourhoods in Headington would reduce road casualties by about 3 a year. Hannah Kirby of Headington Liveable Streets said:

“This would mean three families every year not having to deal with the trauma of road violence. That is why we want to see the LTN plan for the safety benefits of removing rat-run traffic from residential streets in Headington delivered.”

Three women have gone on the record to accuse an Oxford don of sexual harassment. The Times has reported allegations against Miles Hewstone, who resigned as emeritus professor at New College in November.

Hewstone's resignation followed a Bloomberg story about multiple cases of sexual harassment in Oxford University colleges and departments. The article claimed that three other male academics at New College remain in post despite allegations of harassment. The British Academy wrote to Oxford in 2019 for information on investigations into Hewstone. Instead, the Times claims the university directed them to ask Hewstone himself about the accusations. We previously reported the resignation of the head of Oxford's business school, Soumitra Dutta.

Around the city

• Plans to turn County Hall into a four-star hotel will go on show on Thursday 29 January. The council chamber and coroner's court will become a restaurant and bar, while the 1970s office building will be converted into hotel accommodation with a public rooftop terrace and bar. Developers Reef Origin, who previously converted Boswell’s department store into a hotel, are staging a consultation event at County Hall and will publish their plans online. Will Rohleder said their objective was “a new way to experience this special building and its stunning views across the city”.
• Two people have been arrested at the Oxo Bar & Hotel in George Street on suspicion of modern slavery offences. It was part of a three-day crackdown on organised crime across the Thames Valley, with facial recognition technology deployed in Oxford. Assistant Chief Constable Dennis Murray said: “We have made a substantial impact on organised crime groups operating in the Thames Valley with these three days of action. We will continue to work hard to serve victims. We want anyone reading this to know they are not alone."
• The Warneford Hospital is marking 200 years since it was founded as the Radcliffe Asylum with a year-long touring exhibition. ‘Warneford 200’ opened last week in the Museum of Oxford (and will be free to visit even when admission charges are introduced on 26 Jan) before visiting Abingdon, Banbury, Cowley, Didcot, Wantage and Woodstock. We previously reported plans to redevelop the Warneford Hospital as a modern medical research facility alongside a new graduate college for Oxford University; the developers submitted revised transport plans this week.
• Oxford City Council is offering grants to community groups and non-profit organisations who are working to reduce inequality in Oxford, the UK's second most unequal city. Groups can apply for up to £3,000, and applications close on 2 February. Organisations receiving funding in previous rounds include Ark-T Centre, Cowley Road Works, Oxford Mutual Aid, Rose Hill Junior Youth Club, and Blackbird Leys Adventure Playground.
• Headington Repair Cafe is celebrating its 10th birthday; organisers believe it to be the longest running Repair Café in Oxfordshire. It started in January 2016 as a ‘Fix It Café’ in Bullingdon Community Centre, inviting people to bring household items to be repaired by a group of retired men. A number of the volunteers who started the group are still busy fixing on a Tuesday morning; last year they saved 297kg of household items from going into landfill. The celebration will take place on 27 January from 10am at Bullingdon Community Centre, OX3 7HS.

Around the county

• Another 1,000 homes are proposed for Carterton – which, if approved, could mean the town has broadly doubled in size over the course of a decade. Developers Crest Nicholson have made an early-stages application for land on the west of the town, reviving a plan refused in 2014. Construction could start in 2028 with homes ready for occupation from 2029 onwards. Crest Nicholson propose cycle links, improved bus services, public open space, sports pitches and play areas. An outline document has been submitted to West Oxfordshire District Council.
• A controversial life science park in a former quarry in Faringdon has been narrowly approved by Oxfordshire County Council’s planning committee (oddly, quarry planning is handled by county rather than district councils). The BioGenia proposals by De Montalt Life Sciences, which will see seven lab buildings built at Wicklesham Quarry, had been revised several times since first being submitted two years ago; previous rejected proposals had envisaged a logistics park on the site. Green councillor Emma Markham said she was “extremely disappointed” by the decision, citing unique fossils at the site, and the lack of a safe pedestrian/cycle link across the A420 bypass into Faringdon.
• Consultation on Oxfordshire Fire & Rescue Service’s plans to redeploy firefighters, including closing some fire stations, will stay open for another 11 days until 31 January – “because of the interest shown”, according to Chief Fire Officer Rob McDougall.
• Two more councils have withdrawn from X (Twitter). South Oxfordshire and Vale of White Horse said that the platform had become “progressively ineffective at communicating with local communities, but recent events have caused the councils to take things a step further”. Cllr Maggie Filipova-Rivers of South Oxon added: “We haven’t used X for routine service updates for some time but we’re taking this extra step to fully remove the council from the platform as part of our commitment to safeguarding all our residents, including women and children.”

Oxfordshire politics

Warning – bumpy road ahead! It was National Pothole Day last week and didn't we know it. Banbury MP Sean Woodcock and Oxford East MP Anneliese Dodds (Labour) sent a joint letter railing against (LibDem) Oxfordshire County Council's record on potholes, saying it has been rated 'amber' on fixing roads and demanding action. The OCC Conservative opposition leader, Liam Walker, advised residents how to make a pothole claim to the council if their vehicle has been damaged. Witney’s LibDem MP Charlie Maynard posted this video standing next to a giant pothole, celebrating OCC fixing 8,000 potholes and an extra £60m in the budget, but asking people to report them on FixMyStreet. Meanwhile LibDem cabinet member Cllr Tim Bearder claimed that, in order to score the maximum 100 points in the government assessment framework, “we would have to have a highway maintenance budget for 2025/2026 of £2.3 billion”. (As a political football, this isn’t going in to the long grass any time soon – based simply on the level of engagement politicos are getting on their posts. Some things are just catnip, or to borrow OUP’s word of the year, ragebait…)

The LibDems have also been issuing joint press releases, with Olly Glover, Layla Moran and Charlie Maynard challenging the Secretary of State over the planned mega reservoir. They've requested a meeting to discuss “the spiralling costs of Thames Water's reservoir proposal”.

• Banbury MP Sean Woodcock has been meeting with local beery businesses, this time Hook Norton Brewery and the Elephant and Castle in Bloxham. Together with 60 other Labour MPs, he called for an Australia-style ban on social media for under-16s. In Banbury, following news that employees of chocolatier Barry Callebaut were being forced to sign new contracts which reduced their hours and pay, he stepped in, demanding a meeting with the management team.
• Bicester & Woodstock MP Calum Miller, the LibDems’ foreign affairs spokesperson, is raising the alarm over and Trump in Gaza and Greenland, saying: “Trump's tariff threat to the UK and NATO allies marks a dangerous departure as he pursues the illegal annexation of Greenland. He hasn't attacked a NATO ally militarily – yet – but he has done economically. The UK must stand with our allies and face down his bullying tactics.” (Quiet week then?) Closer to home, he invited constituents to take part in the fire service consultation.
• Witney MP Charlie Maynard, outside of potholes, marked Less Survivable Cancers Week with a call to arms for more research and more funding. (Pothole post, at the time of writing: 59 comments, 8 shares, 7.4k views. Cancer post: 2 comments, 3 shares, 1k views. Sigh.) He's been supporting Yellow Submarine cafes who empower adults with learning disabilities through hands-on training; their cafes are in Witney and Oxford, plus a cracking 0nline shop if you need a treat this bleak month.
• Oxford East MP Anneliese Dodds has been at Pegasus School, talking about funding coming to Blackbird Leys, and asking, in a survey, how to spend it. Here's her interview with That's TV on the county's potholes. In Parliament she spoke out against AI deepfakes, and was outraged about harassment of Ofcom staff working to fix the problem.
• Oxford West & Abingdon MP Layla Moran is not happy about Thames Water (again). In Parliament, she told a frankly terrifying story of sewage regularly dripping through the ceiling of the Women's Centre of the JR; the Health Secretary was equally appalled and effectively said the cheque was in the post. (Ok, ok, “largest ever capital investment into NHS infrastructure”. Our inbox is open for the press release for when that leak is fixed. Ick.)
• Didcot & Wantage MP Olly Glover welcomed the news of the Government pledging to improve military housing, but called on them to go further and bring all military homes under the Decent Homes Standard. As LibDem transport spokesperson, he hopes the government will move on Northern Powerhouse Rail, but effectively says ‘I'll believe it when I see it’. In Parliament, he made the perennial LibDem case for proportional representation. Here is his roundup (that screen capture cannot have been an accident…).
• Henley & Thame MP Freddie van Mierlo is another LibDem MP walking a wobbly tightrope on County Council issues this week. Firstly he attended a public meeting in Henley on the proposed fire service reorganisation, where he said response times in Henley must be protected. In a second public meeting, this time on the Watlington Relief Road, he said he had “been reassured the scheme is continuing to progress, but pressed OCC to act faster, given the importance of this scheme to residents.” In Parliament he has been advocating for parental leave, and also for faster broadband for his very rural constituency. Here is his roundup.
• Thames Valley Police & Crime Commissioner Matthew Barber met with Oxford city councillors to discuss crime reduction. He agreed the Chief Constable of the West Midlands should resign, and discussed it at length on with two other PCCs. He was at the Wantage Chamber of Commerce discussing local business, and has been out on the doors in Uffington. Here’s his roundup.

University and research

• Two Oxford academics, Prof Robert House and Prof Moritz Riede, have been awarded the Royal Academy of Engineering’s first ever Green Future Fellowships. They will each receive £3m over 10 years to develop solutions that tackle the climate crisis. UK Science Minister and Oxford-Cambridge Growth Corridor lead, Lord Patrick Vallance, said: “We can’t solve the climate crisis without engineering solutions. By supporting new approaches to key problems, these Fellowships are empowering researchers to tackle global warming.”
• Oxford University physicists have shown that iron-rich asteroids are stronger than previously thought, and could withstand the impact of spacecraft sent to deflect them. This is based on a study of a meteorite sample using a proton beam and laser Doppler vibrometry at CERN to simulate impact. The study was published in Nature Communications and developed in partnership with the Outer Solar System Company, which is investigating the use of proton beams in space. The study implies that an iron-rich asteroid is less likely to split-up ‘Armageddon’ style on impact from a deflection probe. Our Clarion Assistant Space Advisor (CASA) has the following advice on asteroid defence.
  • Get the best telescope to spot incoming asteroids early. ATLAS, which spotted an interplanetary object recently, is a good example.
  • Don’t use an impactor on a comet (Deep Impact). It’s made of ice, and will break up as in the film and cause lots of problems.
  • Don’t train oil drillers to be astronauts (Armageddon). Train astronauts to drill.
• Dr Federica Fedorczyk of Oxford University's Institute for Ethics in AI says chatbot-enabled sexual abuse like Grok's ‘deep nudes’ are the tip of the iceberg in a wider ecosystem of online misogyny, and that safeguards must be built in, not bolted on. Fedorczyk maintains that Grok was structurally designed to operate with fewer safeguards, and has simply only recently hit the news, despite prior warnings. While the UK has acted on Grok this week, Fedorczyk argues it remains insufficient and the problem needs to be approached through a more systemic lens – and that the real perpetrators are not machines but humans, the technology involved merely mirroring human violence.
• An Enigma machine, used to encrypt Nazi wartime messages, will be demonstrated in Oxford next month – with a talk from Mary Stewart, who operated one of the Bombe machines used to decipher it. This is part of Kellogg College's annual Bletchley Park Week, from 22 to 27 February. During World War Two, Bletchley Park (near Milton Keynes) was the home of Allied codebreaking teams. Historian Joan Thirsk, a 'traffic analyst' at Bletchley, later became a Fellow of Kellogg College, while two of the current Fellows are trustees of Bletchley Park museum. (More on why Kellogg has a whole week dedicated to Bletchley here.)
• Oxford University spinout Oxford Biomedica, which develops and manufactures the viral vectors for cell and gene therapies on behalf of pharma and biotech groups, is in renewed takeover talks with private equity group EQT; they have until February 11 to make a firm offer. Shares of the £900m Oxford-headquartered company have doubled over the past year.
• A Silicon Valley beauty parade showcased Oxford life science startups last week. Eight healthcare companies from the Oxford University Innovation portfolio presented their products in an attempt to become “the next OrganOx” – the Oxford-based medical spinout recently acquired for $1.5bn. Oxford University claims to be “the UK’s leading university for spinout creation for the fourth year running”, having raised almost £0.5bn in funding last year.

Trains and buses

• The Oxford–Witney–Cheltenham bus is returning to its roots after current operators Stagecoach decided to pull out. Until 2020 it was operated by Cheltenham firm Swanbrook, who have since been acquired by Pulhams (part of Oxford Bus Group) – and they will be running the service from March. Stagecoach merged the former 853 service into their S2 route. Under Pulhams, it will be rebranded the X52, with a slightly faster run between Oxford and Witney. The service dates back to the 1930s; Oxford and Cheltenham were never directly linked by rail even pre-Beeching. Other West Oxfordshire bus routes are expected to change in May with improved integration between services.
• Alterations to Oxford station are starting in preparation for the Botley Road bridge replacement on 1–8 February, during which no trains will run to Didcot, Reading and Paddington. On the city side, an exit is being cut through the wall to connect with the temporary walkway laid over the tracks while the underpass is closed; on the Botley side, footpaths and ramps are being widened.
• Train services between Oxford and Banbury had extended delays on Monday after a person sadly died at a level crossing near Kidlington. The incident is not being treated as suspicious. Network Rail has been seeking to replace Sandy Lane and Yarnton Lane level crossings with footbridges to improve safety; the rail authority now says the works have been “deferred” due to less freight traffic than expected.
• Chiltern Railways have clarified that Banbury station users can use the west car park as an informal drop-off zone with a 20-minute grace period. After criticism, Oxfordshire County Council also plans to create six drop-off bays beside the new station roundabout.

Independent shops

We were struck this week by the different approaches taken by independent retailers across the county.

Banbury Old Town Indies is rapidly becoming our favourite Facebook page (after the Clarion, of course) with its honest but relentlessly positive coverage. One recent post listed 100 independent shops in the town. Another explained the Shop Local slogan:

“You may see we post often about the ‘shop local’ message, and the reason we do so is not so we can make the small businesses of Banbury wealthy, but because of a much wider belief that benefits everyone: community.

“We know how savvy the shopper is, and how that you know how powerful your pound is. We see many times when businesses fall out of alignment with people’s beliefs, the powerful call to ‘boycott’ – because you know where you spend your money has powerful and magical effects. It can literally make or break a business. So why not use our money to make the area we live better? By supporting your small businesses, you’re helping make the town in which you live a better and nicer place.”

It’s a sharp contrast with Oxford, where groups like the self-styled Oxford Business Action Group see their role as principally to oppose the County Council (the same one as Banbury’s!) rather than promote the city’s shops.

Retail is tough, and your Clarion team has direct experience of that from the sharp end. Footfall in Oxford is up, but visitor profiles are always changing. For some retailers, that means ‘adapt or die’. The much-loved Oxford Cheese Company recently announced they were reducing their hours (just a few weeks after long queues outside the shop) as a result of the City Council’s upcoming £8m Covered Market improvements. The City Council says it is talking to businesses:

“The Covered Market Masterplan was announced in 2023, and the almost £8m investment will ensure the market remains a vibrant and popular destination. We will be working with all traders and stakeholders throughout the process and meetings to discuss the next steps are planned for later in the month. Work on site won’t start until 2027 at the earliest, but early and continued engagement with traders is planned to deliver the plan with minimum inconvenience.”

If we can take anything from this, it’s “be more Banbury”. Tell us your favourite independent shops (news@oxfordclarion.uk): we’d love to share them with the Clarion readership. And consider this a Clarion call to go out and shop local this weekend, whether it's a money saving sack of rice and the ingredients for a warming dal down the Cowley Road, or buying the Christmas socks you needed, but didn't get. Or just some cheese.

Notes from Clarion HQ

¹ Okay: our heading shot isn't a real pothole. It’s actually a cast of a Megalosaurus bucklandii dinosaur footprint found in Stonesfield, on the front lawn of the Oxford University Museum of Natural History. But we find dinosaurs so much more uplifting than angry Facebook posts.

On Sunday we wondered how we’d fill this edition. Now we wonder how we ever managed with one edition a week. Thanks as ever to the incredible army of contributors, whether you’re fact-checking, adding context, tipping off or sharing our content. Our new Facebook page is going rather well, even if we did accidentally leave comments on once. Oops. We are all the Clarion. See you on Friday.