Development

Northway Developments – Haboakus

TonyOX3

Developers Haboakus have finally submitted planning applications for three developments in Oxford. Two of the them are in Northway, the third in Cowley. The applications were submitted at least a week ago (week beginning 31 December or before) but as I write this they still haven’t appeared online.

Who’s Who?

Haboakus is a joint venture. The ‘Hab’ part is TV celebrity architect Kevin McCloud’s company. Hab stands for Happiness, Architecture, Beauty.

Oakus is a trading name of housing asociation GreenSquare, which incorporates what used to be the Oxford Citizens’ Housing Association. OCHAs, presumably pronounced Oakus. Neat, eh?

Tenure

The developers say that most of the accommodation will be affordable housing for rent or shared ownership, with a small proportion for sale on the open market.

On Display

These developments have been much delayed: I first wrote about them in Headington Headlines #3 back in March 2011. I learned that the final proposals were on show at GreenSquare’s offices in Cowley so I went to have a look. I was disappointed, but perhaps not surprised, to find the display consisted of only two small boards on the wall in Reception. There were no plans or technical drawings, only a few rather sketchy artist’s impressions. For what it’s worth I’ve copied the text relating to the two Northway sites.

Westlands Drive

The [project] sits on the corner of Westlands Drive and Sutton Road, next to the Northway Evangelical Church and Plowman Tower. The proposed building is a three-storey mansion block containg 21 one- and two-bedroom flats. The block is in fact two blocks split on either side of a central ‘winter garden’ which allows more daylight and cross-ventilation to all homes and creates opportunities for residents to meet and chat.

Dora Carr Close

[The development] will provide 47 new homes including 15 three-bedroom houses, 4 four-bedroom houses and a four-storey mansion block containing 28 one- and two-bedroom flats. As at Westlands Drive the mansion block has an enclosed winter garden running down its centre. The proposal also provides new state-of-the-art community facilities including a mulit-use hall with improved sports changing rooms, social and café areas, local business units, education and learning space and outdoor areas for growing food. This new venue will have the capacity to host social occasions such as weddings, conferences and sports events.

These are the best pictures I could get of the drawings. There should be better ones once the planning application goes public. You can see the location of the two sites on this map.

The precise boundaries may not be right and I’ll adjust them once the plans are available. [Update 9 Feb 2013: The boundaries shown correspond with the plans published in the planning applications.]

My Thoughts

It’s a bit early to get any real idea what these developments will look like and what impact they will have on the local area. An Oxford Mail report suggested there may still be local opposition. Purely as a first reaction I rather like the idea of the ‘winter garden’ (I would call it an atrium) to bring light and air into the ‘mansion blocks’ (or ‘blocks of flats’). The idea of residents meeting and chatting is the kind of worthy idealism we might expect from Kevin McCloud. It will be great if it happens, but it remains to be seen how realistic it turns out to be.

Apparently the City Council say it takes a long time to get ‘big developments like this’ into the online planning enquiry system. I hope that doesn’t mean the time comes out of the statutory consultation period, but I fear it might. If you know please leave a comment!

Barton Area Action Plan submitted

TonyOX3

The Barton Area Action Plan has been formally submitted to the Secretary of State. This link will take you to a page which lists all the documents but unless you have the perseverance of a saint or a town planner I don’t think you’ll find it easy to find what you’re looking for. For example, you might want to know what (if any) changes were made as a result of the latest consultation.

This document contains “Proposed Minor Post-Publication Changes” but these are only minor drafting changes for clarification, consistency etc. Part 2 of this one contains the ‘representations received’ on the most recent consultation exercise, but as far as I can work out no changes were made to the submission as a result – the February version of the Plan and the subsequent ‘representations’ go together to the Secretary of State.

The next step is the Examination in Public: the provisional date and venue for this is 16 to 20 July 2012 in Oxford Town Hall, but this may change.

Barton Area Action Plan

TonyOX3

The plan to build more than 1000 homes in what has become known as West Barton (or sometimes Barton West) is set to become one of the big issues in Oxford over the next few years. The Barton Area Action Plan (BAAP) was approved by the City Council in December 2011 and the latest version of the plan will be out for public consultation soon.

Understandably the Council stress they want to build a new community which will be as fully integrated into the rest of the City as possible, but this presents several difficult problems. The A40 forms a barrier between West Barton and the areas inside the ring road, Old Headington and Northway. Access, new links, provision for public and private transport, all have to be debated and the best solutions found. Top of the agenda at the moment is the proposal to make the section of the A40 between Marston and the Green Road/Headington roundabout an ‘urban boulevard’. This means reducing the speed limit to 40mph which, it is claimed, makes it possible for houses to face the road rather than have their fronts facing into the development. The Chairman of the Oxford Civic Society, Peter Thompson, has written about this in a letter to the Oxford Times this week in which he says it will need “more than just speed limit signs” to achieve the desired results.

I am not taking issue with Mr Thompson; his letter is perfectly reasonable. The problem I have is that when feelings inevitably run high, claims and counter-claims are made by supporters of one or other approach to these development problems. Unsubstantiated assertions about what should or should not be done are made, but no supporting evidence is ever given. This may be because there is no evidence, although I suspect that there may be some in the planning literature.

Would the ‘urban boulevard’ be the first in the country? In Europe? If so we need to know that it is untried and untested, so the outcome will be highly uncertain. It might work, or it might not. Or has it been tried before? If so, was it a success or a failure? There must be case studies and examples we can look at to help us decide. So far all I have seen are comments about Sunderland Avenue: some say it should not be seen as a template for West Barton, others cite it as an example of the idea in practice. What we have is plenty of noise (sorry, no pun intended!) but little information.

So my plea is this: can the planners and others who want to contribute to the debate give us whatever evidence they have in support of their positions. Let’s have relevant examples of successes (and failures). If there is no evidence, say so: opinions are perfectly valid but knowing what has worked and what hasn’t is far more helpful. The opportunity to create an important new Oxford community (and to regenerate ‘Old Barton’) is too important: we need to give it the best possible chance of success.

The Council’s web page about the BAAP is here, where you can also download the latest version.