Vital Energi and the OUH NHS Foundation Trust have released a nine-minute video about the whole Energy Project. It doesn’t say much about laying the heatpipe through the streets – they say “We have deliberately kept away from covering the detail of the Planning Application as this situation changes so quickly that the video would have been out of date before anyone had seen it” – but it does try to explain what the project is all about, why it’s needed and what it will achieve.
Energy project
Heatpipe planning application goes in next week.
Vital Energi expect to submit their definitive planning application for the heatpipe roadworks next week. I went to a preview of the plans on Thursday evening, where I learned that they will be submitting the paperwork to the County Highways department for ‘Section 50’ approval of the roadworks at the same time. The two approval processes will run in parallel, each with their own statutory consultation period. If all goes well they could start work in September – but they and we won’t know until the processes are underway.
The good news for residents and commuters is that they are confident they can finish the roadworks more quickly than they originally thought. This is partly due to pressure from the County to do the work on London Road and Old Road as quickly as possible, using the full daylight hours and working at weekends, and partly through using more construction workers and dovetailing the work on the different sections more efficiently. They weren’t sure exactly how long they would take, but that should be clear once the applications are made public. This is likely to be two or three weeks from now as it takes a while for the City and County to validate the applications and publish them.
The other welcome news is that they have been having constructive conversations with the County engineers working on Access to Headington so that work on the two projects can be co-ordinated and the inevitable disruption kept to a minimum.
I and others will be watching for the consultation information to become public and will let everyone know as soon as it happens.
Getting moving again
After lying dormant while all the parties got their act together and the lawyers gave Vital Energi their opinion, the Trust and Vital are starting to move. They held two drop-in sessions for interested locals yesterday (Weds 18 May) which they say were well-attended. When I visited the exhibition at the JR in the afternoon people were dropping steadily in a few at a time.
With the help of their planning consultants they are now almost ready to submit what they hope will be the final and definitive planning application for the street works to lay the pipeline. They expect to do this in June, with a decision following in August so that work can start in September. Construction should last 32 weeks.
As expected, the proposed route for the pipeline will now run from All Saints Road via Lime Walk to Old Road instead of using Stapleton Road. Lime Walk (the southern half – the northern half isn’t directly affected) will be able to stay open with traffic lights controlling alternate flows. Disruption to Old Road will be reduced because a shorter stretch will need to be excavated. Apart from this the rest of the project is as it was before.
As reported elsewhere, Lime Walk residents are beginning to ask about compensation for the disruption, with payment for permanent traffic calming measures being a favorite. No doubt there will be more about this at the next Stakeholder Liaison meeting early in June.
The display panels from the exhibition are here, and you can send your own comments to the Trust and Vital by 27 May (link on the same page).