Barton Park

Headington Headlines #326

TonyOX3

Your weekly round-up of local news for 10 – 16 July.

The Planning Review Committee approved the application by @TheSpiritofToad to add a café to their South Park distillery.

A cat called Blue made the mainstream news. He was found up a tree in Hawthorn Avenue with his leg caught in a rat trap; his leg had to be amputated.

Now here’s a strange thing. The first houses being built in @BartonPark_ are being marketed under the name “Mosaics Oxford”. The marketing campaign has emerged on twitter as @Mosaics_Oxford and they have a website which was first registered in April last year — mosaicsoxford.co.uk.  The copyright tag on the website shows that Mosaics is another face of the builders of Phase 1, Hill. Mosaics Oxford is, they claim, a “vibrant new community”, “nestled next to Oxford’s bustling city centre”. Devoted readers will recall that an important selling point of Barton Park was how the new development would integrate with existing Barton to their mutual benefit. Strange then that the word ‘Barton’ (with or without the ‘Park’) doesn’t appear anywhere in Mosaics’ sales pitch. The street address of the marketing office (or ‘suite’, as they prefer to style it) is just a postcode which places it in St Aldates.

A consultation has opened on a proposal for a 20mph speed limit along the whole length of Windmill Road as part of the Access to Headington scheme. Various documents, none of them going into any detail or presenting any evidence about what the effect might be, are here on the County’s website, from where you can also submit your comments. The consultation closes on 11 August.

Electric Aids has moved out of their Windmill Road shop. A notice in the window says they will continue trading, but doesn’t say where.

The Bullingdon Community Centre in Peat Moors was closed abruptly by the council after the structure was found to have deteriorated.

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

  • Frontier Estates Multiple Site London Road / Barton Road
  • Northern Bypass near Barton Park: What a silly place to put a sign
  • 20mph Consultation for Windmill Road opens
  • Overhanging vegetation in Headington Hill cycle path
  • Local Plan 2036

Headington Headlines #325

TonyOX3

Your weekly round-up of local news for 3 – 9 July.

Thames Water starts sewer replacement works in St Clements today, lasting for several weeks. There will be long delays. You have been warned.

Councillors and The Oxford Mail are reporting that because of the work in St Clements, the Headley Way stage of Access to Headington, recently rescheduled to start on 24 July, has now been put back to the new year. This has yet to be confirmed on the County’s website, but it seems highly probable. This potentially pushes the work into conflict with building work on the JR site. Update, 1500 10/07/17 The County has now confirmed the postponement.

Police are appealing for witnesses and information about a suspected arson in Weyland Road last Sunday (2 July).

As predicted by the Huffington Post and reported in HH323, Oxford East MP Anneliese ‘One of Nine to Shine’ Dodds has been made a front-bench Treasury spokeswoman for Labour.

With the closure of the Marston Medical Centre patients have been re-allocated to other practices. Some will go to a unit based at the Marston Pharmacy, others have been allocated to a new unit being set up in the grounds of the JR at Arthur Sanctuary House (ASH, the building opposite the Women’s Centre). Patients have been told there will be no extra parking at ASH so anyone arriving by car will need to join the queues of drivers trying to get into the JR pay-for-parking car parks. Coming from Marston, the JR is served by the 13, X13, 14, and 700 bus services, which would be a sensible alternative for those who can use them.

The planning application by @TheSpiritofToad for a café at their new South Park distillery was called in by councillors after a close vote at the West Area Planning Committee. It will be decided at the Planning review Committee meeting this Wednesday (12 July).

@HeadingtonNews has sifted through all the site allocations in the City Council’s Preferred Options local plan document and produced a list of all the sites in the Headington area. Do try and find time to look at the consultation and make your views known.

Street names for the @BartonPark_ development have been released. The main spine road is to be Barton Fields Road (why not Barton Park Road?). Other names commemorate well-known Barton people, including Barry Holden, former Vice President of the Barton Community Association, and Elizabeth Maud Smith, a resident of Barton for 57 years.

Oxford Health NHS Trust @OxfordHealthNHS, who run the Warneford Hospital, showed their masterplan for how they want to develop the site into a world-leading treatment and research centre. Oxford University is collaborating to help them raise funds, but nothing’s likely to happen for a while yet. Exhibitions of the masterplan will be arranged over the summer months.

Model of the Warneford Masterplan site layout
Model of the Warneford Masterplan site layout (Warneford Lane at the top)

Travellers are back on the Marston Ferry Road cycle path. They were able to access the path due to a bollard failure.

It’s been a long time, but 29 Old High Street (the derelict place on the right near the car park) is back! Planning application ref 17/01686/FUL is for “Partial demolition of existing house and demolition of existing garages and outbuildings. Erection of two storey side and rear extension. Provision of new access, car parking and turning area. Rebuilding of stone boundary wall fronting Old High Street.” The application is open for comments until 3 August.

Ruskin College has been criticised for abandoning its roots and its foundation by closing its international labour and trade union studies department.

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

  • Ramsey Road Allotments
  • Local Plan 2036
  • Ramsey Road Allotments
  • Charity event to celebrate Adult Volunteers in Oxfordshire
  • Frontier Estates Multiple Site London Road / Barton Road

Headington Headlines #304

TonyOX3

Your weekly round-up of local news for 6 – 12 February.

The @HeadingtonPlan has been through its final inspection and has been approved by the Headington Plan Forum. It’s now up to @OxfordCity to approve a referendum which if all goes well could be held in May at the same time as the County Council elections.

Three men were jailed for carrying out an armed robbery at Lloyd’s Bank in Headington in January last year.

The east Area Planning Committee approved @ScienceOxford‘s plans for the Stansfeld Field Centre site in Quarry.

The Oxford Mail carried a report about the City Council changing its mind over the demolition of a block of flats on Underhill Circus in Barton. The general regeneration programme there is still continuing.

We already knew that the City Council will take over a proportion of the new housing in @BartonPark_. It’s now reported that the City’s wholly-owned housing company which was set up last year will take over 95 units when they become available next year.

@BBCBentham on @BBCOxford radio did an item on Thursday about the suggestion that there should be a multi-storey car park at the JR. You can hear it on catch-up until 10 March. The first slot with Headington Cllr Altaf Khan starts at 39’10” and the second, with a multi-storey car park enthusiast from Birmingham (yes really), at 1h39’20”.

In other car park news, the patients’ car park at the Manor Surgery is open again at last. It looks well laid out with clear paved footways, disabled parking spaces and hopefully no more puddles!

Although Headington & Marston have a lively presence on the e-democracy forum some people have also subscribed to local messaging site Streetlife. This operation has been taken over by another, Nextdoor, which offers a similar platform for local discussion and exchange of information. Anyone thinking of signing up would do well to read the thread on the e-democracy forum, especially Stephanie Jenkins’ experience of being automatically designated “lead member”. And although it’s probably no worse than facebook, twitter or any other social media operation, you might like to read their privacy policy, especially as they require real names and actual street addresses.

There’s an online petition to save The Somerset pub on Marston Road, which closed in 2014. It was the last pub to survive in New Marston. The petition was started by Susannah Wilson and is supported by Councillor @joemcmanners. The Somerset is already listed as an Asset of Community Value, which gives locals first refusal if it is put up for sale provided they can raise the money

My favourite Headington-related tweet of the week:

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

  • Disruption
  • New Recycling promotion
  • Proposed abolition of Oxford City Council
  • Headington Plan – what’s next?
  • I see Streetlife a rival discussion site is merging with another site
  • Events on Oxford
  • Good neighbours in Headington
  • Using stocks as punishment in 19th century Oxford