Headington Headlines #257

TonyOX3

Your weekly round-up of local news for 7 – 13 March.

Rebecca of @FrogOrange posted this tribute to Elizabeth Whitwick, co-founder of the Windmill Fairtrade shop, who died recently.

The third community open meeting organised by @theamprevival to help raise money to re-open the Ampleforth Arms as a community pub is on Friday 18 March at 6.30pm in Risinghurst Community Centre

The Amp Revival meeting
The Amp Revival meeting

The Mediterranean Fish Bar in Cherwell Drive received a 5-star hygiene rating in its latest inspection on 12 February.

The cost of parking in Headington’s car parks is going up from 1 April.

@quarryrovers football club has written a comprehensive, well-reasoned and constructive set of comments and proposals about the design of the new Margaret Road sports pavilion. Margaret Road is their home ground.

Heavy rain overnight on Wednesday/Thursday caused the sewer in Ferry Road, Marston to overflow.

A man suffered serious burns and was taken to the JR Hospital after having an as yet unidentified substance thrown over him in an alleyway in Barton on Saturday evening.

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

  • Latimer Road
  • Access to Headington – gloves off for round 2!
  • Possible Extension to Car Spaces in Margaret Road Park
  • Tower block refurbishment

Headington Headlines #256

TonyOX3

Your weekly round-up of local news for 29 Feb – 6 March.

The body of a dead baby girl was found by the Marston cycle path on Monday morning. Police are continuing to appeal to the mother to come forward.

There’s a campaign to oppose the City Council’s plan to make a car park next to the new Margaret Road sports field pavilion. There are two videos on youtube (one long, one short). The planning application is open for comments, but I can’t give the link because the City’s system is down while they do a major upgrade. [Update: the system’s back up, and the reference is 16/00002/CT3. This drawing shows the proposed parking arrangements, including two disabled spaces.]

No less than three Barton stories this week:

The first phase of housebuilding in @BartonPark_, 237 homes, was given plannning permission by East Area Planning Committee. Here is an artist’s impression of what it will look like.

Barton Park phase 1 - artist's impression
Barton Park phase 1 – artist’s impression

Barton Park has been chosen as one of ten ‘healthy living towns’ by NHS England. More on this in a separate blog post.

The existing Barton estate is getting £4m funding for regeneration projects. The bulk of the money, £1.72m, will be spent on Underhill Circus; the health centre will receive £200,000 for its planned expansion, with a further £150,000 available for the rest of the centre and £40,000 allocated to transform its entrance and outside seating area. There will also be improvements to all the blocks of flats, starting with Stowford Road and Bayswater Road, then rolling out similar works to the other blocks in the estate. Where and how the rest of the money will be spent is still being discussed with the community.

The CRUK (Cancer Research UK) shop in Headington joined twitter @CRUKHeadington1.

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

  • Access to Headington – gloves off for round 2!
  • New School for Headington
  • Possible Extension to Car Spaces in Margaret Road Park
  • Empty ground-floor premises in Headington centre
  • Disruption
  • Latimer Road

Health and Fitness in Barton Park

TonyOX3

Barton Park is one of ten places designated ‘healthy new towns’ by NHS England.

Barton Park is the one of the smaller developments. The full list is:

  • Whitehill and Bordon, Hampshire – 3,350 new homes on a former army barracks. A new care campus will co-locate ‘care-ready homes’ specially designed to be adaptable to the needs of people with long term conditions with a nurse-led treatment centre, pharmacy and integrated care hub.
  • Cranbrook, Devon – 8,000 new residential units. Data suggests that Cranbrook has three times the national average of 0-4 year olds and will look at how prevention and healthy lifestyles can be taught in schools from a young age.
  • Darlington – 2,500 residential units across three linked sites in the Eastern Growth Zone. Darlington is developing a ‘virtual care home’ offer where a group of homes with shared facilities are configured to link directly into a digital care hub, avoiding institutionalisation in nursing homes.
  • Barking Riverside – 10,800 residential units on London’s largest brownfield site.
  • Whyndyke Farm in Fylde, Lancashire – 1,400 residential units.
  • Halton Lea, Runcorn – 800 residential units.
  • Bicester, Oxon – 393 houses in the Elmsbrook project, part of 1300 new homes planned.
  • Northstowe, Cambridgeshire – 10,000 homes on former military land.
  • Ebbsfleet Garden City, Kent – up to 15,000 new homes in the first garden city for 100 years.
  • Barton Park, Oxford – 885 residential units.

The NHS will bring in clinicians, designers and technology experts to work with developers to explore new ways of encouraging healthy lifestyles and of delivering healthcare. They say they want to “test creative solutions for the health and care challenges of the 21st century, including obesity, dementia and community cohesion”. Simon Stevens, Chief Executive of NHS England said:

“We want children to have places where they want to play with friends and can safely walk or cycle to school – rather than just exercising their fingers on video games. We want to see neighbourhoods and adaptable home designs that make it easier for older people to continue to live independently wherever possible. And we want new ways of providing new types of digitally-enabled local health services that share physical infrastructure and staff with schools and community groups.”
Source: www.england.nhs.uk/2016/03/hlthy-new-towns/

These NHS objectives match up well with the objectives the Barton Park developers set themselves: to create an ‘exemplar’ development which encourages walking and cycling rather than car use, safe streets, open spaces and access to the countryside. But as ever, the proof of the pudding will be in the eating.