Barton

Headington Headlines #386

TonyOX3

Your weekly round-up of local news for 17 – 23 September .

If you use the Marston cycle path @Marstonbikepath you’ll be pleased to know that it’s been resurfaced between the Cherwell bridge and South Parks Road. When I rode it they were still working on it. The shared section between the two bridges was being laid in gravel on tar. The South Parks Road end had nice smooth tarmac for bikes and gravel/tar for pedestrians, but I gather this may have also become 100% gravel. This seems a strange choice. I hope I’m wrong, but with bikes using it as well as people on foot I’ll be surprised if this surface survives the winter without starting to break up.

The path with tarmac and gravel
The path with tarmac and gravel

The City Council is advertising for a Locality Officer for Barton. A significant part of the job will be working on the ‘Healthy New Towns’ initiative – see my posts Health and Fitness in Barton Park and HH 280 for the background.

The Planning Review Committee meeting to reconsider the refusal of the Swan School application (see this earlier post) has been scheduled for Monday 15 October. Meanwhile, the school is accepting applications for admissions in September 2019. Does it really only take 11 months to build a school and all its associated infrastructure?

Meanwhile a group identifying themselves solely as ‘a group of Marston families’ is calling for signatures on a petition, although they don’t tell you the actual wording of the petition. It just seems to be ‘leave your name and email address if you want the school to go ahead’. The person starting the petition is named as Tessa Clayton; the Swan School has promoted the petition on their own twitter feed. Beware phishing – you might want to read change.org’s privacy policy before clicking to sign the petition.

Cllr Roz Smith reports that the long-awaited rectification of the Latimer Road parking restrictions will happen on and after 1 October. The wrong road markings were painted in after Beech House construction finished.

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

  • Parking Enforcement

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

Headington Headlines #249

TonyOX3

Your weekly round-up of local news for 11 – 17 January.

It was a quiet week on the heatpipe front, at least in public. My round-up is 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.

The City Council is running a consultation with the people who own the leasehold of their properties in the Northway and Wood Farm tower blocks (and Cowley too) over the costs of the improvements the Council has announced (see HH 244 for original story). Cllr Mike Rowley has explained the Council’s position here.

Meanwhile, Oxford East Tories, led by aspiring council candidate Mark Bhagwandin @markb_gt, have sponsored the formation of an Oxford Towers Leaseholders’ Association to fight the Council over the charges.

Police raided a flat on Underhill Circus, Barton on Friday in a search for illegal drugs. They found cannabis and crack cocaine, and two people, both from Barton, were arrested.

The Ronald McDonald House Charity which provides accommodation for families of children in hospital has announced plans to build a 62 bedroom ‘hotel’ in the grounds of the JR. The charity currently has a 17-room unit on the top floor of the children’s hospital. The new building will be on the site of the tennis courts opposite Sandfield Nursery, currently being used for storage by Vital Energi. A planning application is expected in March.

An Extraordinary Board Meeting of Southern Health NHS Foundation Trust was held on Monday, but despite the serious criticisms of the Trust’s record none of the board members resigned. The following day Monitor (the national health regulator) announced they will appoint an expert to improve the way deaths are investigated, particularly those involving people with learning difficulties or with mental illnesses.

Back in August 2014 (see HH 175) a planning application to build a care home for dementia patients at 1 Pullens Lane was turned down by the East Area Planning Committee. Now another developer – Frontier Estates (they of the Latimer Road student accommodation proposals) – has put in a new application (ref: 15/03611/FUL) for a 55 bedroom care home on the same site. The Oxford Mail report is here.

East & South elevations
East & South elevations (East faces Pullens Lane)

 


Location map

I noted in HH 245 that Purple Zone, which includes Barton, had won the Blue Bin Recycling League prize in December. As a result, the Thrive project @thriveteams has received an award of £400 to support their work with young people on the estate.

Friends of Stansfeld @FofStansfeld joined twitter.

My favourite Headington-related tweet of the week:

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

  • Headington Post Office
  • Radio story Foxwell drive green space
  • Pothole – Marston flyover slip
  • City Council agrees energy pipe needs planning permission