IT’S hard not to notice that two property sites in Oxford are silent and empty, and have been for some years.
The old Royal Mail sorting office stands on 6.7 acres of land at the end of Hollow Way, next to the Oxford Business Park, while Harcourt House stands in about three acres at the western end of Headington Hill Park, on the Marston Road.
Both these sites are on good bus routes, convenient for shops, school, and other amenities.
The larger of the two is advertised as due for demolition and replacement by six business units, the smaller as wellappointed office space.
Yet, this is a time of acute land shortage for homebuilding in Oxford City, with Oxford University seeking a relaxation in planning conditions in order the more freely to build staff/keyworker accommodation.
Would not these two sites be best used for housing on the sorting office, and a student nurses’ residence and convalescence home at Harcourt House? The sorting office site could accommodate 84 houses or houses and flats. Harcourt House would offer enough space for a nursing residence and convalescence home.
It could be that the land on both sites can’t be released for any of the above, given commercial interests trump housing needs.
Perhaps Harry Aubrey-Fletcher and his family who, on altruistic grounds (paying back something to the JR) are seeking to gift land for keyworker housing and to build a nursing students’ residence and convalescent home at Wick Form, in Oxford’s northeastern Green Belt, outside the city and away from bus routes (etc), could purchase the Harcourt House and sorting office sites and so fulfil their deepest desire to help Oxford and its communities, not out in the Green Belt but within Oxford’s boundaries. Now this would truly be an act of philanthropy.
BRUCE ROSS-SMITH
Bowness Avenue, Headington
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