Dear Danny
Oxford Health NHS Foundation Trust and University of Oxford are jointly planning a major redevelopment of Warneford Park as detailed on the Warneford Park Consultation website, which will result in a significant increase in the number of staff, students and patients travelling to the site.
The plans include creating an additional 230 car parking spaces, which are likely to result in at least 500 extra car trips a day into Headington, significantly increasing the volume of traffic passing through the Warneford Lane/Gipsy Lane/Old Road/Roosevelt Drive junction (the "WGOR junction") and other Headington junctions and roads.
This increase in car trips will:
- Increase congestion across Headington and East Oxford, damaging already stressed bus services not just around the Warneford Park site but more broadly.
- Increase noise pollution, air pollution and road danger across Headington and East Oxford, with the worst effects directly outside Cheney School and along pupils’ routes to school.
- Make already unsafe cycling routes such as Gipsy Lane, Old Rd, Roosevelt Drive and Morrell Avenue even more dangerous and deter some people from cycling at all.
- Make it impossible to rebuild the WGOR junction and other Headington junctions in a way that provides safety and priority for pedestrians, wheelers, cyclists and children (e.g. as illustrated in this visualisation), because this is only possible if we reduce traffic volumes from what they are now, as explained in our Re-imagining Headington's roads and junctions website post.
Headington has already suffered an increase in these harms thanks to the University of Oxford building a 417-space multi-storey car park on its Old Road Campus, for which planning permission was granted despite much local opposition. Now it seems intent on inflicting further harm in the same way, and we are concerned that Oxford City Council (as the Planning Authority) will assist the University in this anti-social endeavour by granting permission for the parking increase, not learning from its past mistakes in allowing the Old Road Campus and Westgate car parks to be built.
The developers have recently submitted a planning permission application for this application. The consultation ends on Friday 19 September. Join us in opposing these plans by:
Kind regards
Headington Liveable Streets
