Headington Headlines #51

Here’s my weekly round-up of local news for 20 – 26 February —

Headington Headlines is one year old this week. My first round-up of local news covered the week 21 – 27 February 2011.

Starting with news from the retail sector, just over a year since it closed the Londis on the corner of Windmill Road re-opened under new ownership on Saturday. The same day @LazyGamerUK held a ‘pre-launch’ event prior to opening fully next week. There’s been some discussion of the shop’s prospects on the e-democracy forum under the ‘Costa Coffee‘ thread, oddly. Go down to the post dated Feb 21 09:09 for the first mention.

A shark to rival @Bill_Heine‘s has appeared outside Posh Fish as part of the redecorations after their fire. [Hooray! – Ed] Council planners are going to decide whether it needs planning permission. [Boo! – Ed]

Meanwhile, Marston residents are threatening to boycott Tesco when the new store opens on the site of the old Friar pub. Nearly 200 people attended a protest meeting.

Headington Action held an informal meeting on Monday to discuss how to encourage people to hold street parties this summer.

On Tuesday local Councillors for Headington Ward held a Ward Focus meeting at Headington School, focussing on cycling issues. You can read their report here.

Marston & Northway Neighbourhood Policing Team carried out an operation to enforce the ‘Access Only’ restrictions in Elms Drive, Marston on Thursday. One vehicle was given a ticket. @TVP_Marston reported bin fires in Stockleys Road on Saturday and asked for any information. Phone 101 if you can help.

Several groups are threatening to invoke the Town Green legislation to protect bits of land affected by the Barton West development plans. Northway Residents’ Group will try to protect land between Foxwell Drive and the A40 which would be affected by one of the access links, and Barton residents want to protect the Barton nature park. Technically separate but still tied in to the same development, Friends of Old Headington are campaigning to have Ruskin Fields declared a Town Green in an effort to thwart Ruskin College’s hopes of developing the site.

This map shows the location of some of the places mentioned in this report.

Active topics on the Headington & Marston e-democracy forum this week:

  • The Friar Pub Marston and Tesco
  • Costa Coffee
  • New Lime Walk and All Saints junction “improvements”
  • Peacocks

I try to cover news from the OX3 postcode in Headington and out as far as Barton, Sandhills and Risinghurst (see map). To feed into next week’s summary you can comment on this article, or tweet either with the hashtag #ox3 or @mentioning @TonyOX3.