A crowdfunded legal challenge to the Low Traffic Neighbourhoods in East Oxford and Cowley has been withdrawn after King’s Counsel advised it would “likely fail”. The crowdfunder was launched by Reconnecting Oxford, a campaigner with an active Twitter/X account, in August 2022. It sought to “end road closures| Oxford Clarion
Woodstock Road has a traffic problem. Your Clarion writer experienced this first-hand recently. It was 3.15pm, school run time, and traffic was moving desperately slowly – we would estimate an average of 5mph. It was stop-start all the way from First Turn to Squitchey Lane, where Team Clarion decided to| Oxford Clarion
Health warning: we advise against reading this article while eating. Oxfordshire has a sewage problem – one that is getting worse by the month. Regular Clarion readers will know this, as will casual readers of almost any media outlet in the county; anyone who has received any political communication from any| Oxford Clarion
Thames Water are not just the people who flood our rivers with sewage. They’re also planning to submerge a prime chunk of rural Oxfordshire under England’s second largest reservoir. Could they be any more the pantomime villain? But don’t rush to judgement quite yet. The Thames Valley| Oxford Clarion
Few people know the challenges of transporting people around Oxfordshire quickly, efficiently and affordably better than Olly Glover. Since 2024 the MP for Didcot & Wantage, he formerly worked in the rail industry, and has a background as a cycle campaigner. We invited his reflections on what the county should do| Oxford Clarion
West Oxfordshire District Council and local Liberal Democrat councillors are celebrating victory over the Government in the High Court this week. The dispute concerns Salt Cross, the new ‘garden village’ development near Eynsham, which WODC had specified needed to be built to net zero standards. WODC had planned a fossil| Oxford Clarion
With a government determined to “sprint towards clean, homegrown energy”, it’s a good time to be an investor in solar farms. Ed Miliband, the Secretary of State for Energy, has made no secret of his support for onshore solar – a stark contrast to his Conservative predecessors. He approved three| Oxford Clarion
It’s been half-term week and your normally assiduous Clarion scribes have mostly been elsewhere. So this week's newsletter is definitely in the “small but mighty” category. (We resisted the temptation to ask ChatGPT to bulk it up with reworded press releases.) This week's top stories New traffic measures could| Oxford Clarion
Welcome back! This week's edition has history, greenways, new buses and reports from the first meeting of the new County Council, including a sizeable spat over the official opposition... This week’s top stories Continuing our occasional series on the incredible county we live in, we looked at the legacy| Oxford Clarion
There are county council elections on 1 May. If you're in a fiercely contested area, you will have people knocking on your door from now until 9.30 pm on polling day. Perhaps you already have. Judging by the stream of press releases and leaflets sent to us by Clarion| Oxford Clarion
“Sir Keir Starmer has made overhauling planning the foundation of his push for growth, attacking the current rules as ‘ruinous’ and promising to take on ‘nimbys’ who have held Britain ‘to ransom’ and ‘choked’ the economy.” So ran a splash in the Times this weekend. Local councillors have been fingered| Oxford Clarion
Happy Valentine’s Day to all our readers. We love that you’re here. Let us bring a romantic flavour to your Friday lunchtime with some… in-depth budget coverage? This week’s top stories There was a point on Thursday evening, with Oxford City Council deep in debate about garden| Oxford Clarion
Once a year Oxford City Council sets its budget. It doesn't often make for good headlines (Giant pothole on A34! Emma Watson! Jeremy Clarkson’s dog!) but it should. For the 165,000 people living in Oxford City, this is how the council will spend around £100m and materially impact| Oxford Clarion
This week’s top stories The Oxford–Cambridge Arc is back – but this time it’s a ‘growth corridor’. Oxford is to get a Government-led Growth Commission to “review how best to tackle the barriers that are constraining development of new housing and infrastructure”. Bringing together councils, universities and local| Oxford Clarion
Rail industry documents passed to the Oxford Clarion show that the Government will need to overrule Network Rail if the Botley Road work is to finish before June 2026. The road was originally closed in April 2023, and was set to reopen in October 2024. But the discovery of a| Oxford Clarion
It is tree planting season. Oxford City Council has made much of planting 150 trees across the city. Oxfordshire County Council is adding another 109 street trees within the city limits. One enterprising city councillor, in conjunction with an East Oxford school, has planted nearly 1000. (You are reading that| Oxford Clarion
Oxfordshire’s on-going Special Educational Needs (SEND) crisis continues. The Government has pledged additional funding – but will it be enough? Following the recent Budget, the Labour Government announced on December 4 a “£740m capital investment to create more specialist places in mainstream schools”. Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson promised “tangible change| Oxford Clarion
In a city where every scrap of land is sought for much-needed housing, it scarcely seems believable that a 2,000m² site just outside the centre has been sitting derelict for 18 years. Even more so when that site has a history stretching back 180 years and is located in| Oxford Clarion
Will Dawes, Director of Chapel Music at Somerville College, curates a selection of choral delights for the festive season – from the Messiah to Midnight Mass. Whilst the big day is still about a month away, the season of shopping, festivity, and celebration in these darker evenings is very much already| Oxford Clarion
