title="Baldons Parish Council in Oxfordshire">

The Website

The Baldons Parish Council serves the villages of Marsh, Toot and Little Baldon in Oxfordshire.
This is our website. We hope you find it useful.

Please contact us if you have questions concerning the work of the Parish Council, if you have any concerns that you feel the Council should be aware of or where it can help or support you.

You can use the navigation menu to find your way around the site.

The Baldons Community website is the place to come for information about our parishes.

Looking for an interest group  or upcoming events? Need to know the times for the Mobile Library or Fireworks Night? You're in the right place

Using the Baldons Community website you can stay up to date in the areas that you care about. Just look down the menu on the left to see what is going on in the Baldons. Click on a section to see more. A plus sign means there are sub-sections to go into.

Content & Contacts

We rely on local people to help keep content up to date. Ideas and suggestions? Please contact Peter Burke

There is a revised SODC Local Plan with huge implications for this community.  See here for details.

Bell ringing Open Morning - Saturday 13 July

At St Peter's Church, 10.30 - 12.00. All Welcome!

Pub Quiz 

At the Seven Stars - Wednesday 24 July March, 7.30 pm

 

Baldons waste Collections

Details here

 

SODC LOCAL PLAN - URGENT

Please respond to SODC Local Plan  2034 by 5PM THIS MONDAY 18th February

Your urgent input is required.


The relevant SODC page is here.  Comments from CPRE are here.
 
If you wish to make representations by letter send them to:

Adrian Duffield 
Director of Planning
South Oxfordshire District Council
135 Eastern Avenue
Milton Park
Abingdon OS14 0SB
 
Again, the deadline for submission is 5 pm on Monday 18th February

 

 

The Baldons Neighbourhood Plan 

The Neighbourhood Plan is important because it will give residents a say on future development in the Baldons. The Parish Council shares the view that people will want to take the opportunity to influence the future of the place where they live or work and that the Plan for the Parish should be written by the Parish rather than by Planning Officers.

Latest update here

For full details read here

Please contact us on: baldonsplan@gmail.com.

 

The Baldons Neighbourhood Plan Referendum Result

 

The Baldons neighbourhood plan received an overwhelming majority ‘YES’ vote at referendum on the 4th October 2018. The official results are:

Electorate eligible to vote: 320

Votes Cast: 154 or 48.1%

Votes Yes:   140

Votes No:    14

Details have been posted on the SODC website

http://www.southoxon.gov.uk/services-and-advice/planning-and-building/planning-policy/neighbourhood-plans/baldons-neighbourhood-

 

Reports will now go to members of the Cabinet and then Council to formally adopt the plan.

 

 
 

Proposed Oxford to Cambridge Expressway

This has become a huge issue locally.

The Expressway Action Group now has has in excess of 35 parishes involved including the Baldons Parish Council  The steering group lead by Peter Rutt has  Elizabeth Gillespie,  Dawn McGiveron and John Clark as members  and the group is a stakeholder  representing the various villages and providing information to support the evaluation of the route option  The group are not opposing the road in principle but by providing information on biodiversity and ecology and the views of local communities aim to help  Highways England  make the best possible evaluation of the scheme taking account of practicalities, problems and costs. We still hope to provide enough information to ensure that the recommended route goes north and west of Oxford. For full details see here.

Follow this link to see a Google map of the proposed corridor. You can zoom in and out to get a better idea.  At the moment maps from Highways England are poor and we are chasing them for more accurate boundaries.

You can find Highways England's detailed "reasoning" for their choice here.  There is a summary booklet here.

The Expressway and its 1 million new houses is therefore going ahead - and where the road is placed will determine the housing developments. 

The plan is to accommodate 300,000 more homes in Oxfordshire and ~900,000 more residents. This is double the existing number of houses and will, needless to say, profoundly change the nature of the county, never mind our immediate environment.

Highways England will now start a 12 month program of on-the-ground studies of potential routes within the corridor, and by Autumn 2019 they will be ready with a shortlist of 5 or 6 ‘best options’ routes which they will take into a Public Consultation.

This will be via a series of open meetings across the area where residents, businesses and environmental groups can express opinion on each route option, point out errors and omissions and generally participate / feed back to the Highways team.  Our understanding is that the Consultation will be led by Highways’ routes team rather than via our local Councils.

We believe that one of the key deciders in final route selection will be the relative environmental and wildlife harm each route would cause - and during the 12 months that Highways are studying the two branches of the corridor for routes, they have said they will be looking not just at the ‘known’ wildlife reserves like Otmoor and the SSSI’s but also at unlisted sites with rare and special wildlife and habitat. We can help with this!

Highways have told us that all the wildlife / heritage and environmental data you all supplied to them via EAG’s portal has been added to their maps, and will influence the routes: but this extra 12 month field study gives all EAG member parishes and communities a new ‘window’ to send in more and better wildlife and other data to the Highways technical teams, so they know where to look for special sites and high-risk areas. 

The earlier we can get this to them the better: Waterstock has been gathering wildlife evidence in their wetlands and river areas using static wildlife ‘trail’ cameras, and in Cuddesdon we’re doing the same, using low-cost cameras we found on Amazon for less than £60...   Why not ask your local wildlife people where the best spots are, and join in? Let us know if you can help, and we’ll co-ordinate and submit to Highways’ team as before.

The Parish Council will be sending out further information in due course.

The Expressway action group (EAG) are seeking more information from the Highways about the route planning to give a better idea of those communities likely to be most affected by the options and those less so.

It is also likely that villages will have to undertake substantial fundraising and campaigning in preparation for and the during the consultation period in 2019.

Dawn McGiveron and John Clark are on the committee of the Expressway Action Group. 

 

Connie Barrettt

We are sad to announce that Connie Barrett died peacefully at the age of 97 on Monday, 8th October

Hazel Johns

Many villagers will remember Hazel Johns, who died at the age of 97, in Axbridge, Somerset, on 14th October.

 

Newsletters

 

Click here to see an archive of parish newsletters

 

Pub Quiz

The Seven Stars will be hosting its next Pub Quiz on 26th September. Please come if you can!

 

Five years of the Seven Stars

There was a very lively celebration five years on from the opening, Friday 30th March 2018. Congratulations to Matt and the Team for making such a success of it.

 

Teenagers for tennis?

I would like to guage interest in the idea of a simple youth tennis tournament as a way of the under 18s in the area to meet one another in a fun way.  
If enough people are interested to get critical mass, we can start to think about date, courts and format.
Please send me an email at domnewland@yahoo.co.uk if you are interested in hearing more or getting involved.
Dom Newland 

 

Baldon Runners

The Runners are out again, at 8 am on Saturdays. 

Click here for details

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

South Oxfordshire Local Plan

SODC is now consulting on the final version of its local plan prior to its submission to the Planning Inspectorate and public enquiry in 2018. See News

 

Defibrillator on the Village Green

Now installed. See News, click here.

 

 

 

Seven Stars Early opening

The Seven Stars opens at 10 am for breakfast. See here for details.

 

 

 

Grenoble Road and the Green Belt

There is still a threat to the Green Belt. Details here

 

The parish newsletter

click here for back issues

 

Upcoming events

See bottom of page

 

Fast broadband

This is now live in most parts of the villages. Contact your internet provider or look on www.superfast-openreach.co.uk/where-and-when for details.

 

 


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Wednesday
24
July
19:30 - 22:00 - Pub Quiz
Monday
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19:30 - 21:30 - Parish Council Meeting

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