Concerns surface (From The Oxford Times)
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Concerns surface
7:00am Thursday 18th March 2010 in
Sir – While Janet Beer was posing against the neatly manicured lawns of Headington Hill Hall and extolling the benefits which Brookes University brings to Oxford (Report, March 4), Brookes’s other contributions to the community were surfacing below.
A report elsewhere in the same issue described how Headington Hill Park had been polluted by excrement escaping from a blocked sewage pipe leading from Brookes’s adjacent site, causing a health hazard and leading to the park being closed for a week, depriving residents and dog-walkers of a much-needed recreational facility.
How neatly does that encapsulate the relationship between Brookes and those who have the misfortune to live in the shadow of its expanding campus and halls!
John Small, New Marston
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J F van den Broecke says...
3:56pm Tue 23 Mar 10
OBU and the future environment
It is a crying shame that the mindset that supports the present development plans of OBU without much apparent questioning is stuck in the mode of 1960's building. Whilst all around us overambitious plans crumble in the present financial climate, it is proposed to erect a white elephant at the gateway to Oxford from London. Neither the majority of councillors nor the city’s officers appear to be able or willing to face up to the real future environmental, educational nor –dare I say – community challenges, nor provide clarity on obscured detail.
The possibility of the application being deferred to the Secretary of State offers a brave ray of light between the bulldozing manoeuvres now taking place. The same mindset that destroyed the one significant building on site - the Darcy – must not be permitted to bulldoze over the impact assessments that this scale of project requires. To show that it does not practice what it teaches, Oxford Brookes runs a degree course in environmental impact assessment, yet appears attempting to duck the (legal) requirement to comply with these in respect of its own building plans. Together with traffic assessments carried out during student examination periods, noise assessments in the summer holidays and wild life surveys in winter, the large, visually polluting banners on site proclaiming its community and green credentials just beg the question. Can we accept this application in good faith when we are not told how high the buildings will be or have seen no reliable environmental impact or traffic impact assessments?