REDEVELOPMENT, regeneration, retail is looping the loop in Botley and Botley is getting bewildered.
One of the things we wanted out of all this was to keep the petrol station when the Seacourt Retail Park is redeveloped.
Yet as you reported last week, we learn that it is to go because: “you don’t usually have them on a non-food retail site”.
The week before that, however, we were told that ‘food’ (i.e. restaurants) in the West Way redevelopment would not be viable without a cinema.
Yet, when we had spontaneously suggested that the best place for a cinema would be the Seacourt retail site (near the petrol station), that wasn’t right either.
It isn’t surprising that the residents of Botley feel that ‘regeneration’ is being done to them, rather than for them and with them.
Coherent planning across two sites 100 yards apart will be important to the success of each, and crucial for those who live here.
It isn’t much to ask.
JANET GODDEN (Cllr) North Hinksey & Wytham Division Oxfordshire County Council
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