Headington Car Park omitted from development plans

The agenda for the next Full Council meeting has been made available.  Seven sites have not been included within the Proposed Submission for development. Here is the section on Headington Car Park.

* Headington Car Park – the potential loss of car parking and the effect on trade at shops in Headington was of considerable concern to the local community with a petition received of nearly 3,500 signatories against any development on this site. The site is surrounded by the Old Headington Conservation Area and for development to be viable it would most likely need to be built over a number of storeys which could adversely affect the conservation area. At this stage it is difficult to know whether this is deliverable and achievable and if it could retain sufficient car parking. For these reasons it should not be allocated.

It is still technically possible for this decision to be reversed at Full Council on 19 December, but this is fairly unlikely. We shall report back to Headington ward residents with the final decision on Tuesday 20 December at our Headington Ward Focus meeting, Headington Baptist  Church, Old High Street, 6.00 – 8.00pm.

Congratulations to all our residents and businesses for voicing our opposition so effectively!

Saving Headington Car Park

The news is out: following a strong, year-long campaign by Headington residents and businesses, planning officers at the Town Hall have accepted our arguments and decided Labour’s plan to build on the car park should be dropped.You read that right: we are about to win the fight to save our local car park.
So, first of all, thank you to all of you who have supported the petition. Together with local residents and businesses, we have worked hard to make sure the strength of opposition to Labour’s plan is heard loud and clear.

It has been obvious that we have all the arguments on our side. Labour, for their part, have only said in public, in the words of Cllr Darke, that the plan is ’eminently reasonable’ and, indeed, ‘essential’. They have failed to mention that the plan for this site was to maximise the capital receipt which would mean building student flats that would have given no direct help to the very real housing crisis we have in our city.

We have pushed them to see sense — to realise that building on this car-park would be a disaster for the local community and even attempting to do it would be a costly fight Labour would lose. They have refused to back down — up to now.

The good news is that, finally, Labour have backed down on their hare-brained scheme. We understand that the planners have recommended that the car-park is crossed off the list of building sites. After an internal fight, Labour have decided not to over-rule the Council’s officers.

But it’s not over yet. There is no official decision — that should come on 19th December at a meeting of the full Council. So, we need to keep up the pressure.

And we will confirm the outcome at our next Ward Focus Meeting on 20th December: join us there.

Of course, this is only one part of the battle. Labour have let the car-park get run-down while hiking the prices for parking. We are working to get improvements for our district centre and we will continue the fight!

Why build on Headington Car Park?

In our recent ward survey, a number of residents asked us why anyone would want to build on the Headington car park, and to publish this on our website.

Cllr Darke wrote a comment piece in the Oxford Mail in answer to the question ” Should Headington Car Park be built on?”  We have been unable to find any other rationale.

Click on the link below to read those comments.

why build on the car park

THANK YOU!

WITH YOUR HELP WE’RE GOING TO  WIN THE BATTLE TO SAVE THE CAR PARK!

Car park update

In response to all those of you who are anxious about the future of the Headington Car Park, the Sites and Housing document (which includes proposals on this) is due to be discussed at Council on 19th December, as this is the stage where full Council needs to decide on draft policies which will be consulted on and then submitted for examination.  It is going straight to Council rather than to CEB beforehand, so the papers should be available approximately one week before the 19th.

Car park petition

We have been asked by a number of residents in our ward and by shoppers living outside Headington where they can go to sign the petition opposing the “preferred option” to put housing development on the Headington Car Park

The following businesses are making available petition pages:

  • Jacobs & Field,
  • Monaco
  • The pet shop
  • Headington Homewares
  • Oxford Design
  • Holland & Barrett
  • Brambles,
  • Pen to Paper
  • Crown paper shop
  • Scott Fraser
  • the Richards surgery.

The petition will close on 5 September.

A number of residents have helped with the petition, including Jill Cummings and Stella Welford

Residents’ thumbs down to car park plans

Last night’s North East area forum was quite well attended, with a good turn out of residents from our ward, and the major issue of concern was most definitely the City Council’s preferred option of development on the Headington (Old High Street) car park site

Worries centred around:

  • any potential loss of parking spaces which are key to the vitality of the shopping centre (the ‘stilts’ holding up the accommodation are likely to take up approx 10% of current spaces)
  • safety and lighting issues and the general management of undercroft parking
  • the unlikelihood that the development would be cost-effective given the above
  • concerns about carbon emissions and noise and smell for occupiers of the accommodation overhead
  • the difficulty in designing the development to be in keeping with the conservation area and the park
  • the detrimental impact on views from the park
  • the lack of any alternative parking sites to mitigate the resulting loss of spaces

Residents asked the Planning Policy Officers to research into developments of this kind in other parts of the UK to inform their views, but at present virtually all spoke against the development and will send back comments saying they will not support this option

Consultation on housing sites includes car park

A preferred options paper is going to be considered by the City Executive Board next Wednesday. It has information on sites proposed for housing and development and many are in Headington Ward or will affect Headington Ward residents.  These include (preferred option in brackets):

  • Churchill Hospital site (reduce car parking provision on site)
  • Dorset House site
  • Gipsy Lane campus
  • Headington car park, Old High Street (car-free residential and/or student accommodation)
  • Headington Preparatory School (do not allocate)
  • Headington School (do not allocate)
  • JR Hospital (reduce car parking provision on site)
  • Manor Ground (100% affordable housing)
  • NOC (healthcare and medical research – reduce car parking provision on site)
  • Old Road campus (hospitaland medical research – reduce car parking provision on site)
  • Park Hospital (medical teaching and research – reduce car parking provision on site)
  • Ruskin College (main academic site)

Library use of the Dorset House site has been rejected

For a full list and commentary please click here

New car parking tariffs

tariffs.jpg

 As previously reported, new parking tariffs will come into force shortly in the Headington (Old High Street) and St Leonard’s Road car parks. The new tariff is likely to be implemented in 5-6 weeks time.

We are grateful to the residents and businesses who have worked with us to identify and propose a different time slot in the parking charge tariff to Scrutiny Committee and to City Executive Board. There will be a new time slot of 0-2 hours. The charge for this will be £1.20 and it will be reviewed (to make sure it works) in 6 months time. It will be good for businesses because it encourages some shoppers to stay for longer in Headington on their shopping trips to visit more shops and restaurants. It will be good for shoppers because  they won’t now have to worry about rushing back to the car park to feed the meter when they’re in the middle of buying something.

The original charge for the 1-2 hour time slot had been £1.50 so we are pleased that we have negotiated this down on behalf of residents and businesses. There will also be a limited business permit scheme similar to the one in operation at Westgate and more work will be done on this very shortly.

We know that many residents would like to retain a lower rate for very short term parking, and another option we put forward was for two slots of 0-30 minutes, and 31 minutes-2 hours. The Scrutiny Committee felt there was not enough data on how long people park for this to be a viable option at this stage, so we will fight for more accurate data to be recorded

We are also very concerned about Sundays being included in the weekday tariff. Normal rates will apply on Sundays and the Board member stated to Ruth yesterday that any concession to keep Sundays fixed tariff cannot be afforded in the current financial climate. This means that a family parking for 4 hours stay on a Sunday to use the Park’s facilities would be faced with a £12.50 charge, and we think this is unacceptable. We will continue to fight this!

We are aware that this Sunday tariff issue may cause problems for Old High Street residents in particular; they sometimes park their cars in Headington car park and let their visitors use the spaces in front of their houses, because of the lack of resident parking in their area. We are seeking alternative ways of achieving this, possibly by making a business case for allowing OHS residents to park there and display residents’ parking permits as is already the case in another car park. But we will need better data to justify this. Watch this space!

Consultations affecting our ward

I don’t know about you, but I’m finding it tricky to keep up with all the consultations that are happening at the moment, especially as many are online and can be easily overlooked!

A pre-application briefing has been sent to residents groups by the University of Oxford relating to a prospective redevelopment of land at their Old Road Campus. A meeting will be held on 20/1/11 by the University with residents’ group reps. There is no application submitted to date, but if you want more details please contact your local residents’ group or get in touch with David or me

The City Council has a number of consultations happening right now. These include:

  1. Parks and open spaces (ends 31 Dec)
  2. Housing strategy (ends 17 Jan)
  3. The budget 2011-2015 (ends 31 Dec)
  4. Implementation of dog control orders (ends 31Jan)

These can all be accessed via the City Council’s consultation page here.

Then there are the County’s consultations!

  1. Draft Local Transport Plan (ends 9 Jan)
  2. Oxford, Headington: Highfield and Old Road Transport Improvements (ends 12 Jan)
  3. County’s 2011/12 budget proposals (ends 10 Jan)

There will be an open meeting for Highfield residents to discuss the revised Highfield scheme on 6 JanuaryThe consultation on whether funding should be discontinued by the County Council for Bury Knowle Library will be held between March and May 2011.

We have called in the decision on increased car parking charges in the Headington District Centre (by double in one case!)  for further scrutiny on 10 January. The paper showing these prospective increases can be accessed here – please click on the link from item 8 to view it. If you have any comments on this document please email either David or me as soon as possible