Ruth Wilkinson and David Rundle

Thanks to everyone who attended yesterday evening’s surgery, Altaf and Ruth enjoyed meeting you and discussing your concerns

These included issues around road signage, parking, ways to improve traffic junctions, hazardous traffic light sequencing at the Windmill Road/London Road junction, a county council legal matter, damage to pavements by refuse collection lorries, proposed Ruskin developments, sewage and drainage problems, and the lack of cycle track along London Road

It’s good to hear that so many residents enjoy living in Laurel Farm Close

We shall update residents as we make progress with their issues

Our next street surgery will take place at 6.30 pm on Tuesday 9 June outside St Andrew’s Church in St Andrew’s Lane.  If it rains, Altaf and Ruth will retreat to the White Hart pub opposite!  We’d love to hear your views on any local issues, and all are welcome.  We look forward to seeing you!

Thanks to all who signed up to become Friends of Bury Knowle Park, we will be in touch with you shortly to let you know the date and time of our first meeting (probably 24 June)

Would you like to:

• help improve the park’s appearance?
• have a say in the park’s facilities?
• improve the local conservation value?
• increase the park’s safety?

Why not help us start up a Friends of Bury Knowle Park group?

There are lots of benefits:

• the groups are a great way to meet new people
• you can make a positive contribution to your local area
• it’s a great way to get exercise, improve your health and wellbeing
• you can have a say in tackling vandalism and crime in the parks
• you can influence future improvements to the park
• Friends Groups can apply for funding to improve parks
• Groups can organise community events
• you can access training
• you can enhance your skills

Come to the Headington Festival on Sunday 7 June and find our stall!  We shall have an informal meeting at 3 o’clock and everyone is welcome

The campaign to save Dorset House from demolition was mentioned briefly in yesterday’s Oxford Mail , click here for the link.

Five residents from Latimer Grange and McMaster Court attended yesterday’s site meeting with the demolition company, along with the Latimer Grange manager and Ruth.

The project supervisor’s name is Eric and he will be present on the site at all times during demolition. The work is scheduled to start on Monday 8 June and the hours of work will be between 8.00 and 18.00 Monday to Friday, and 08.00-13.00 Saturdays, this was agreed with approval of residents.  It is scheduled to take 8 weeks and all access will be from London Road.

The dismantled materials will be recycled as much as possible - bricks, roof tiles, timber. In the unlikely event that contractors’ machines will damage the pavement outside (making it difficult for the elderly with buggies), the demolition firm will make good the damage.  Asbestos is present on the site but appropriate safety precautions are being taken. Some of the trees have a protection order on them and ‘crowd barrier’ style fencing will be placed around them with signs to warn demolition staff to keep clear of them.  A map was produced which shows which trees have TPOs and which not (the majority along the London Road boundary). There will be no burning on site.  Dust will be damped down as much as possible.   The site will be locked up as now during the project, and the side gate to Latimer Road may need to be strengthened.  Contractor parking will be on site.

Representatives from Quintain arrived towards the end of the meeting.  They said that they would shortly be approaching Oxford City Council for pre-application advice regarding development of the site but they didn’t know what would be in the application. (They withdrew their previous application four years ago which was for student accommodation)  One person from Quintain said that in his view there was only one tree on site worth keeping and that was a copper beech at the rear of the site opposite Latimer Grange, but that was diseased.  It also turned out that this particular tree is in the way of the demolition.  I rang the Tree Officer immediately to ask him to do checks on this, and also the Head of Planning Control and Development at the City Council. To be frank, I am concerned that trees may be lost, although there is no evidence to back this up, and I have already arranged that an enforcement officer keeps a close watch on the project

The local residents have been invited to visit the site at any time and raise any issues they may have with Eric the supervisor.  If any resident from Latimer Grange needs Eric’s contact number I suggest they contact Andrew the manager, and I have it too.

Details as follows for meeting re demolition of Dorset House

Site meeting: Dorset House
11.00
Led by project manager Terry Hawken tel 07973 210677

Andrew Galloway from Latimer Grange  has kindly agreed to raise the
issue of the preservation order on the trees on my behalf, and is
going to alert the Latimer Grange residents to the change of date and
time. Neighbourhood police have also been asked to attend.

The following issues will be covered:

ask when work is at its noisiest and limit noise to specified hours of the day
clarify the number of times heavy traffic will need access/egress
to/from the site and ensure contractor parking is on site
explain method of demolition (not the trees!!)
give information re dispersal of dust or any burning
make sure the site is left secure at all times
explain timescale of work

The demolition will start first thing on Monday morning June 8, but for the first week there will be no heavy machinery as work will be surface stripping. 

It’s the European and County Elections tomorrow. You will get two ballot papers and have three votes: one for a party in the European and two for County candidates to represent the area comprising Headington, Marston and Northway. Your two County Councillors are presently part of the LibDem team and one of those, Altaf Khan, is standing for re-election. Alongside him, Barry Crossman who works on the University research site on Old Road, is standing hopefully to join Altaf. I am hoping that our team will remain at full strength as only that way can we best represent the people of Headington. I see that the Tories’ slogan is ‘Vote for Change’ — and considering the Conservatives have run the County for the past four years, introducing residents’ parking charges, cut budgets for traffic maintenance, messed up the buses in our area etc etc, I certainly hope that Headington will vote to send the County Conservatives a message that we need a change of Council!

Enough of the soap-box. Here is the public service announcement. Where to vote between 7am and 10pm:

• if you live between London Road and Old Road, between Windmill Rd and Brookside (and also including the Rock Edge area), you vote at the old Scout Hut on Perrin St in New Headington
• if you live in Old Headington, between Dunstan Rd and Larkins Lane, or between Osler Road and Old High Street (including North Place), you go to the Baptist Church (NOT, please note, the Viking Sports Centre — you go there if you live in the area bounded by Barton Lane and Barton Rd)
• if you live around the top half of Headley Way, from Franklin Rd over to Sandfield Rd, taking in Beech Rd too, you vote in St Antony of Padua Church Hall, just below the entrance to the JR

As the area covered by the County division extends beyond Headington, it might be useful to give the other polling stations as well:

• if you live around the bottom half of Headley Way, including the ‘Lakes’ area and Copse Lane, you vote at New Marston First School on Copse Lane
• if you live in Northway, you vote in the Community Centre, just next to the old school which Labour want to flog off and demolish
• if you live on the north side of Marston Road, including Crotch Crescent, Lynn Close and the Jack Straws Lane, Haberton Mead area (but excluding Moody, Pritchard, Peacock and William St), you vote at St Michael’s Church, at the bottom of Jack Straws Lane
• if you live on the south side of Marston Road, from Ferry Road over to Wadham Park, or in one of the streets north of Marston Road excluded from the Jack Straws Lane polling district, you vote at the Scout Hall, at the corner of William St and Marston Rd (note this new location)
• if you live in the Croft Road estate or Ouseley Close, you vote at URC on Marston Road, just opposite the entrance to Croft Road
• if you live in the Carter Estate or in Old Marston Village, you vote at Mortimer Hall

Got it?! If you have any questions of if you want a lift to the polls, give us a call on election day on 01865 798777.

Do you have concerns about the application to extend the licensing hours at the White Horse Pub on the corner of Headley Way and London Road?  Do you want to come to a meeting to speak up about your worries and understand more about the process of making your views known?

There is a public meeting planned in the Victoria Court conservatory at 7 pm next Monday 8 June, do come along if this issue concerns you.  David will be on hand to explain how licensing applications are dealt with by the City Council

To follow up on Ruth’s posting, she and I are continuing to investigate all possible routes to persuade the owners that the original buildings on the Dorset House site are worth saving. We’ll keep you updated with news of those discussions. Some residents have contacted us asking to sign a petition to save the House. So, we oblige! If you look down the right of the screen, you’ll see our survey has changed. If you do want to try to save Dorset House, do respond to the survey, replying yes, and please provide your e-mail address. This is so that we can validate our response before submitting the on-line petition to the owners of the site.

We will also provide hard copy for those who prefer to sign it that way. But, also, to those who would prefer to see Dorset House go or who don’t care, do also vote in the survey. We do want to know the whole range of opinion out there.

A demolition notice has been sent in by contractors on behalf of Quintain, the owners of the Dorset House site, to demolish all buildings on the site except for the three nearest the corner of Latimer Road and London Road. The demolition work is scheduled to take place week beginning 8 June. This came as a complete surprise to local residents.

This means that Dorset House itself is set to be demolished, along with 1A Latimer Road, and the newer buildings to the rear of the site facing Latimer Grange.

Residents are perplexed about how the owners can simply announce demolition when the City Council has previously recommended the retention of the old buildings as being of local interest. In fact, five years ago, David and Stephen Tall called for extra protection for the House and the buildings were put on what’s called ‘the Local List’. But that’s not the same as a nationally listed building and the site is not within a Conservation Area. In legal terms, when there are no other safeguards, an owner has a right to demolish their own property. That means that the Planning Department, to everyone’s frustration, can’t just stop the demolition happening.

There are, though, other aspects to the issue. We have also found out that there are various trees on the site that have preservation orders on them, and we have requested the planning enforcement officer to contact the demolition project manager to make this clear to him

There are also parts of the site which would not be a loss, in particular the newer buildings at the back of the site. We know that Latimer Grange residents are keen that the demolition of those buildings takes place as soon as possible, to stop the chance of anti-social behaviour on the site. We are setting up a meeting between them and the project manager to discuss issues around dust, noise, parking, access and egress, and, most importantly, security.