THE campaign to preserve the local, communal nature of Botley’s West Way shopping centre continues apace. We’ve just learned that Doric, the would-be developers, will be submitting revised plans to the Vale of White Horse by this coming Friday, December 20 – plans that Doric promises will “excite” us.
And, too, there is movement at the Seacourt Retail Park, where work already is under way to convert the former Habitat building into smaller retail units (Homebase’s lease expires in April 2015). Curiously, Doric representatives at their public consultation in September were unaware of the existence of Seacourt, less than half-a-mile away. How professional is that?
At the same time, Waitrose are submitting plans to Oxford City Council for a 12,500 sq ft supermarket on the former Halfords site between Botley and Oxford, to open its doors at the end of 2015.
In Beyond Retail: Redefining the Shape and Purpose of Town Centres (just published in response to the recent Portas Report), emphasis is placed on ‘greater cross-border co-operation between local authorities to better understand the impact of broader evolving shopper patterns at a local level’. Later, ‘the approach to Local Plan preparation needs to be modified to ensure retail patterns are looked at over a wider area, which will require joint working between authorities’.
Again and again this document speaks of the necessity for reduction in the retail footprint, due largely to rapidly expanding shopping online. So I wonder, how successful is the joint working between The Vale and Oxford City? Just how many shopping centres do we need?
RUTH CAMERON
Conifer Close
Botley
Oxford
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