Peter West, the man behind the campaign to save the Marston police base, talks about the importance of community rallying

I was born in Oxford and have lived in Headington for 55 of my 74 years.

When I retired from my work as a chartered engineer, I decided that I had been very fortunate during my career and I’d like to donate some of my time to the community and spend more time on my hobbies: walking and photography.

My involvement with the community began with being treasurer of the charity ‘Respite for Oxfordshire Sick Youngsters’ (Rosy), whose patron was Lady Rotherwick, where I learned the value of volunteering and how much the support provided was appreciated by the families of the affected children.

I subsequently joined Helen and Douglas House, as a fundraiser responsible for fundraising in pubs and golf clubs, and became involved in helping to plan and organise marathon walks and mountain climbing e.g. the national Three Peaks and the Yorkshire Three Peaks challenges.

Again, you meet a number of affected families, donors and celebrities from all walks of life, who are all supporting a common cause, from which I drew an immense amount of personal satisfaction.

During the above time, I undertook the role of a street Neighbourhood Watch organiser which I expanded, to form a resident’s association and organised various social ‘get togethers’.

One of these events drove home the need for developing communities, for when I asked a member how recently she had been living in the road (as I hadn’t seen her before) 25 years was the answer!

Becoming chairman of the resident’s association entitled me to join Headington Action, where I became involved with the annual Headington Festival, the twice monthly Headington Market, making and putting up Christmas decorations and other more minor events.

I was also involved in setting up the Neighbourhood Forum to help define the future of Headington and its community.

Unfortunately, my wife became seriously ill for a period, which meant that I resigned from active participation in many of the activities I was involved with.

Now that she has recovered, I’ve taken on the role of treasurer for the charity Oxtalk and chairman of the Headington and Marston Community Forum, which has given me a unique insight into campaigning for change against public organisations.

Like Thames Valley Police deciding to close the force's Marston Neighbourhood Team office for financial reasons – which I and other members of the forum thought was not a practical solution.

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Marston and Northway police office to be closed forever after eight years

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The Marston and Northway police office will stay open after campaign

To successfully counteract the proposal, it required researching the facts, analysing the potential risks and costs, preparing a petition made up of the names of people from a number of affected local organisations – local councillors, residential associations, our local MP and local media to support a brief and concise argument of why the office should not be closed.

The petition was effectively rejected initially so whilst my philosophy has always to keep everyone informed, I drew up a small list of influential people and kept them informed of the numerous additional reasons that I kept persistently putting forward to keep the office open.

The Oxford Mail, whilst being objective, was very supportive in the discussions, as was our MP, who met the Chief Constable to help persuade change his mind.

I did keep up a barrage of emails until the Crime Commissioner relented and supported the objection, and recommended our proposal of remaining open to the Chief Constable.

The Chief Constable eventually agreed and funded the opening ‘until further review'!

My message - persistence!