Headington Headlines #263

TonyOX3

Your weekly round-up of local news for 18 – 24 April.

Vital Energi have withdrawn their heatpipe planning application again and will be using planning consultants to help them get the scheme cleared for construction. A route from All Saints Road via Lime Walk is now preferred to the original Stapleton Road line. Read more here.

All my posts about the project are under the ‘Energy Project’ tab in the main menu, and there’s a page of links and contact details here.

It seems that Oxfordshire County Council’s decision last year to end its contract with the heavily-criticised Southern Health Trust for specialist adult learning disability services could take up to two years to wind down.

Headington has its very own drone expert.

Feather & Black has closed.

A cash point next to McDonald’s at Roundway was apparently blown up in a raid early on Saturday morning.

The date for the County’s decision on the latest Access to Headington scheme proposals has been put back to 9 June to allow for more consultations. See here for more details.

The City Council has submitted a revised proposal for the Margaret Road recreation ground pavilion, this time without parking spaces.

Revised proposal without parking
Revised proposal without parking

The website of the Oxford Trust, who are taking over the Stansfeld Outdoor centre site, was a victim of the 123-reg hosting service’s mass deletion of sites in a “clean-up error”. They are still available on twitter @scienceoxford.

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

  • Foxwell Drive
  • Children’s Centres latest news
  • Access to Headington scheme – decisions deferred
  • Disruption
  • Live bus timetables on oxontime app
  • Cars and vans driving and parking on the pavement
  • Cycle path ‘repairs’
  • Tower block refurbishment
  • Margaret Road Pavilion

Energy project work “not until September”

TonyOX3

I couldn’t go to the latest Energy Project Stakeholders’ Liaison meeting last Thursday, but a report in The Oxford Mail and information from people who were there confirms that Vital Energi have withdrawn their current planning application covering the street works. It seems they’ve now admitted publicly what we knew privately, that they haven’t constructed a heatpipe through an established residential area before and have never been challenged to submit a planning application. It makes me wonder if any of the parties are asking what the experts in the Carbon & Energy Trust who brokered the scheme have to say about their role in setting the scheme up in the first place.

Anyway, Vital have now called in the professionals and engaged planning consultants Turleys to draw up a new application. This will seek approval for the heatpipe to take a new route. Instead of going from All Saints Road to Old Road via Stapeton Road, the pipe will continue to Lime Walk and then go along the southern half of Lime Walk to Old Road and then to Churchill Drive. I understand they believe Lime Walk is wide enough not to have to be closed to all traffic, which would have been the case in Stapleton and will still be true for Latimer and Sandfield Roads.

The Oxford Mail reports that Vital Energi are now saying “the rough schedule at the moment is to put an application in again in May and then after comments and committee to hopefully start work at the beginning of September.” Whether all parties can be clever enough to avoid the heatpipe and Access to Headington work clashing remains to be seen.

Access to Headington decision deferred to June

TonyOX3

The date for the County’s decision on the latest Access to Headington proposals has been put back to 9 June to allow for more consultations. Announcing the new date on their website, Oxfordshire County Council say this will give them

time to consult on other options specifically for Headley Way and Windmill Road that retain some on-street parking while also providing continuous cycle lanes and more space to ease traffic flow. This consultation will take place between 28 April and 23 May.

This means we can expect another tranche of documents near the end of this week, and a final chance for the pro- and anti- on-street parking lobbies to make their cases.