Southern Health

Headington Headlines #284

TonyOX3

Your weekly round-up of local news for 19 – 25 September.

While we wait for confirmation of when and where the heatpipe roadworks will start, the County Council has opened applications for short-term visitors’ parking permits for people who will have work going on outside their houses. You can apply here.

Nor do we have any firm details yet about the timing of the Access to Headington road works. All we have at the moment is that work is scheduled to start on 17 October to reconfigure the Roosevelt Drive/Old Road junction. Among other changes this will provide two lanes coming out of Roosevelt Drive which is intended to provide more capacity for when Churchill Drive is closed for heatpipe work.

The latest fall-out in the sorry tale of Southern Health was the Chairman, Tim Smart, who resigned ‘for personal reasons’. His broadcast interview answering questions about Katrina Percy being slotted into a new job on the same salary with no due selection process showed a man out of his depth and out of control of the situation.

A motorcyclist suffered head injuries in a crash at Headington roundabout on Thursday morning. He was taken to the JR.

A burst water main flooded Trinity Road in Quarry on Wednesday.

Even grown-ups were discovering their inner 6 year old by doing chalk drawings on the pavement in Headington’s Big Draw on Saturday. Overnight rain had washed it all away by Sunday morning, but then ephemerality is part of the artistic concept, or so I’m told.

Just one active post on the Headington & Marston e-democracy forum this week:

  • Campaign Against Cuts to Services at Horton Hospital Banbury

Headington Headlines #281

TonyOX3

Your weekly round-up of local news for 29 August – 4 September.

File under ‘Unexpected’. Katrina Percy, the much-criticised CEO of Southern Health NHS Trust, resigned from her post on Tuesday. Campaigners will be disappointed that she will still play a part in the organisation: her resignation statment says she is “delighted to be taking on an alternative role, providing strategic advice to local GP leaders as they work with others to transform the way in which health services are delivered across Hampshire”.

Three landlords with properties in Grays Road and Valentia Road have been given 6 months in which to stop using the houses as HMOs (Houses in Multiple Occupancy) as they contravene the City’s housing policy and do not have planning permission.

I came across this account of a visit to C S Lewis’ house The Kilns and the nature reserve in Risinghurst by self-confessed C S Lewis fan @citizenofanvard.

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

  • Campaign Against Cuts to Services at Horton Hospital Banbury
  • Disruption
  • Seven Headington items at East Area Planning Committee Sep 2016
  • Lighting at foxwell drive
  • Barton Park junction
  • Northway

Headington Headlines #278

TonyOX3

Your weekly round-up of local news for 8 – 14 August.

The Headington Neighbourhood Plan was passed by Oxford City Council to go forward for formal consultation. Following the six week public consultation the Council and the Neighbourhood Plan Forum will make any necessary amendments. The Council will then arrange for an independent external inspector to examine the draft Plan. If the inspector confirms that the Plan is satisfactory it will be the subject of a public referendum programmed for May 2017. See the full announcement on the Plan’s website.

The ex-bed shop on the corner of Old High Street is becoming an Italian restaurant, Buongiorno e Buonasera. They already have a restaurant in Gloucester Green. @LuigiMutti tells me it’s due to open on 20 September.

I wrote a short review of Headington’s independent café and gelatería Adria.

Local MP @AndrewSmithMP has said that the dysfunctional Southern Health NHS Foundation Trust should be broken up.

The Triangle Nursery has opened on the Old Road Campus, catering for children aged 4 months to 5 years.

A planning application to build 52 homes just off Waynflete Road in Barton has been approved – not by Oxford City but by South Oxfordshire Council. The land is just outside the city boundary. See my original note in HH #262.

Struggling for a Headington Olympic connection the only one I’ve found so far is Katherine Grainger’s silver medal in the women’s double sculls. Katherine is Chancellor of @Oxford_Brookes, a position she has held since March 2015. She has now won more Olympic medals (5) than any other female British athlete.

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

  • Dong Dong
  • Disruption
  • Barton Park junction