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Concerns about OCC’s agreement to enter into negotiations with OUFC

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I am still trying to remain open-minded about Oxford United Football Club’s proposals to build an 18000 seater stadium on green belt land that forms part of the Kidlington Gap at Stratfield Brake. But as the County and District Councillor for the area that Stratfield Brake sits within, I think the County Cabinet’s agreement to enter into negotiations with OUFC was premature, given that there were still so many unanswered questions a year on from the initial approaches from the club to the council.

Of course we all want to help the club find a new home, but if we’re talking about using public assets to do that, we need transparency about what they’ve done to help themselves. For example, we still don’t have evidence that they’ve have explored all legal remedies to stay where they are.

It also appeared from the club’s own long-awaited report that they hadn’t even started looking at other alternative sites until October last year, after claiming at the beginning of 2022 that they had already explored all other options.

After waiting 8 months for the full report on the club’s plans, it took a further 2 months for it to be circulated to stakeholders in a heavily edited form which doesn’t suggest that they are willing to be as transparent with local residents and stakeholders as they have claimed in the past.

Kidlington Parish Council (KPC) had been waiting for most of last year for the report from the club showing their detailed plans for the main Stratfield Brake site (which they are leaseholders of) so that they could be put out to local consultation. They could not take a decision on relinquishing their lease until they had consulted with the local residents who they represent.

The club has tried to blame the council for delays in making a decision on the initial very broad proposals but that was simply not the case. KPC wanted to make a decision on an informed basis and had been working towards a genuine local consultation, but to facilitate that they needed details of what the club were proposing. Thus any delay in the decision by the council are entirely the fault of the football club. Instead of engaging properly with KPC to help them hold a local consultation, they have gone around them by moving their plans to the site known as the Triangle which KPC has no direct control over.

As a result, I made a plea to the cabinet to include an amendment to the proposals to enter into negotiations with the club that would also commit the council to a full local consultation on the proposals before any final decision was made which should include the option to accept or reject the proposals. This wasn’t even responded to.

As the local county councillor I was disappointed that my call to the County Cabinet for a full local consultation didn’t seem to be endorsed. That would at least have given local residents some comfort that their views, both for and against the proposals, would be properly taken into account.

There was a reference to future engagement with stakeholders but it’s not clear who would undertake this and if it would be at a point where the local community would have a chance to say yes or no to the plans once they know what they are. With so many questions still left unanswered, we need a definite assurance that such a consultation will be part of the final decision process, otherwise we may find ourselves overtaken by circumstances as plans progress and positions become embedded”.

Whilst I’m pleased to see the council took note of local concerns raised in last year’s country-wide engagement exercise, what is being proposed now is a rather different prospect and doesn’t completely deal with local views about having yet another significant development sited on some of Kidlington’s dwindling green spaces.

If we’re going to condone building on the green belt we need to ensure there is quantifiable local support for that. There are a range of views, as we saw at the meeting, and I want to make sure I’m fully representing the balance of local opinion, but until we ask the whole community we don’t know what that is.

My position as the local councillor for the area is that I have to support the majority view of the residents that will be affected by this development whatever they are. I don’t understand why there is a resistance from both the club and their fans as well as the council to asking local people directly what they think of this idea. There may be opposition, but there may equally be majority support for the plans. If so we can proceed on that basis knowing that the club would be welcomed by the village. Surely that would be a better outcome for all concerned, especially OUFC’s owners who I assume wouldn’t want to impose themselves on to a community that would resent them being there.

I will continue to advocate for a full local consultation both internally within the council and with other local representatives, particularly the local MP Layla Moran.

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Our Green Spaces are Worth Fighting For!

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    I’ve spoken to hundreds of people during this short election campaign and probably the most important issue on most people’s minds right now is the threat to our local green belt.

    I made a video about it last week which has received quite a bit of attention since it was released. You can watch it here.

    Of course in Yarnton, Begbroke and Gosford (where I’m standing to become the new local County Councillor) it’s in the forefront of everyone’s minds because, if it goes ahead, we’ll be the ones living in the middle of a building site for possibly the next 10 years. We’ll also see our small rural communities destroyed and replaced with a single medium sized town, one that will probably also double up as a university campus for the Begbroke Science Park.

    But even in Kidlington, (which comprises a large part of the County division) it’s going to have a huge impact. There may not be as many houses built in the area, but the additional strain on our local resources, such as health services, education and leisure facilities will be very detrimental. We’ll also see a noticeable reduction in air quality which is likely to have health impacts on the most vulnerable, as well as increased risks of flooding. The A44 will probably become a car park during busy times, giving us all the chance to sit and admire the 4 storey apartment blocks that will tower over the edge of the dual carriageway.

    There’s also a good chance that Kidlington will finally lose the argument about hanging on to it’s status as a village. In 10 years time, when the population has possibly tripled, there’s likely to be a much greater push to establish the whole area as a suburb of a Greater Oxford City. Not a prospect I, or anyone else in the area, relishes but something we may have little choice over.

    I for one won’t stop fighting for that until the last blade of grass has fallen under the bulldozer’s tracks.

    All this might be acceptable to a greater degree if these houses were going to provide affordable accommodation for local families, many of whom are crammed into a single house with perhaps 3 generations under one roof. But these aren’t for the likes of them. These will be expensive luxury executive houses built for investment purposes, with the so-called ‘affordable’ houses reserved for people in Oxford City. The District Council saw to that when they handed control of those houses over to the City Council in a closed meeting at the beginning of the first lockdown. None of these houses will be within reach of local residents.

    A lot of people have told me that all this is inevitable and that the 4400 houses are a ‘done deal’. Well that isn’t the case until we know the outcome of the legal challenge being brought to the high court next month. Until that’s over we have no idea if these proposals will stand up or collapse. There have been reports in other areas recently where challenges have been upheld, and if we get the same result Cherwell District Council will have to think again. In those circumstances we’ll need as much support on the District Council as possible which is why I’m supporting Fiona Mawson to become our second Green Party Councillor on CDC.

    But even if we fail to stop these devastating plans though the courts, we can at least do our best to limit some of that devastation by having engaged and active councillors at all levels of local government. On the County Council fighting for infrastructure and other important considerations like flood protection, and of course at District and Parish level scrutinising the individual planning proposals themselves. We also have to be vigilant in opposing ‘infilling’ which may become more of an issue as the amount of development space in the area is snapped up by the bigger developers.

    So I hope I and Fiona can count on the support of our local residents in the elections on Thursday. We’ve seen how our current crop of Conservative councillors have let us down on these issues, and let’s not forget that this whole idea was the brainchild of the Conservatives on Cherwell District Council in the first place, in cahoots with Oxford University, the City Council, the Oxfordshire Growth Board and the Local Enterprise Partnership. After Thursday we may have more leverage to defend our small rural communities against these faceless, unelected and anti-democratic quangos and take back control of our green heritage.

    I for one won’t stop fighting for that until the last blade of grass has fallen under the bulldozer’s tracks. I hope you’ll all support me as your Green Councillor in that long battle.

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    The Bulldozers are Rolling in Wolvercote

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      St John’s College, part of Oxford University have started tearing up green fields in Wolvercote, North Oxford, for their money making project dubbed Oxford North.

      The people in the area are in shock at what is happening to their green spaces and the likely impact on everyone of this massive project.

      This will comprise mostly business parks, shops, restaurants and hotels with some housing, most of which will not be affordable to the people in the area. It’s not only removing vital green infrastructure it’s also going to massively increase congestion on local roads as it creates another 4500 jobs that the city simply doesn’t need, without providing the houses that it does desperately need.

      Oxford City Council claims it can’t meet its own affordable housing needs. The Oxford North development demonstrates the reason why. The City Council chooses not to meet that need and instead pushes it on to the surrounding districts such as Cherwell and South Oxfordshire.

      I joined the protest as Wolvercote directly abuts my district council ward in Cherwell and is likely to impact heavily on Kidlington, especially on top of the extra development that is planned for the area around Kidlington, Gosford and Water Eaton, Yarnton and Begbroke, assuming that goes ahead.

      I made a short video giving some of the context which you can watch using this link below.

      The people of Wolvercote and North Oxford send a message to St Johns College Oxford University

      We need to stand up against the same brazen greed that is motivating the concreting over of our precious green spaces before it’s too late. You’ll have a chance to send a message to those councillors who backed these projects in the election in May.

      In Cherwell the plans were promoted and pushed through by the Conservative ruling group in the face of massive opposition from local residents which they completely disregarded and continue to ignore. In Oxford the Labour run City Council continues to apply pressure on other districts to deal with the housing need the city is making worse by using spaces like these to build more economic development rather than affordable housing,

      Greens have always stood against this sort of opportunistic expansionism for profit and we always will.