Wider benefits (From The Oxford Times)

Wider benefits

7:20am Thursday 29th July 2010 in

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It is very disappointing to hear of the impasse reached between Oxford City Council and the development group Carlyle over the proposed £22m shopping centre linking St Aldates and Queen Street.

If Carlyle is to be believed, the scheme is viable even in these straitened economic times.

How beneficial it could be to Oxford to have a commercial development of this scale taking place while we languish in the economic doldrums.

It could provide much-needed jobs and contracts for the local construction industry.

Once built, it would also have a big role to play in the economic recovery of Oxford and Oxfordshire in the years to come.

For that reason, we feel it is important for the city council and Carlyle to find a way through the impasse.

Of course, the city council has to ensure that the council taxpayer is not shortchanged and that the Carlyle Group makes the sort of contribution to local facilities that should be expected of a scheme of this size.

At the same time, the council has to recognise the wider benefits it will bring and the fact that economic certainty may mean that the ability of developers to hand over large amounts of cash as part of a planning agreement is not as great as it was in the boom years.

It appears that the politicians have got little involved in the fate of the project thus far. That may be because it is a planning matter and they do not want to get too involved at this stage in what will ultimately be a planning decision.

The fate of the shopping centre is, however, about much more than planning.

The wider benefits it will bring to the city far outweigh anything it will generate in planning gain.

Some political impetus behind the project would not go amiss.