Site Visit for Union Street Planning Application

We visited the site of planning application for some student accommodation in a constrained little site off Union Street in East Oxford, near to East Oxford Primary School and one of its external sports areas.  This application was approved by West Area Planning Committee last month and was call-in to Planning Review Committee.  We should have heard it on 30th November but as that was the day of strikes, I and many other committee members agreed not to cross the picket line and to defer the meeting.  We now re-determine the application on 15th December.

This application is the one that was the subject of the nasty anti-student comments I posted about last month so I thought we ought to have a site visit to try to get a feel for the site and try to understand the position of all people and groups concerned.

I was grateful that two planning officers were able to attend and explain the site to us, with the proper plans.  I attended along with Nuala Young and Mike Rowley so that means at least some of the committee will have first-hand experience of the site.  I'm sure others will know it too as it is currently the site of the "Plebs College" squat so it's been in the news a lot lately.

I shan't comment here on my views on the merits or otherwise of the application as I want to be able to listen carefully to what people say and make an unbiased decision at the meeting on Thursday 15th December.  Click the picture to see a larger version of it.