Westgate Demo, Oxford

For Imme­di­ate Release — 29th March 2008
Cam­paign­ers Cel­e­brate West­gate Delay With Street Par­ty Protest

For Imme­di­ate Release — 29th March 2008
Westgate demoCam­paign­ers Cel­e­brate West­gate Delay With Street Par­ty Protest

Cam­paign­ers took a pirate ship, a dozen inflat­able sharks and a sam­ba band into the West­gate Shop­ping Cen­tre today to cel­e­brate a sig­nif­i­cant set­back for its planned expan­sion. Build­ing work on the expand­ed West­gate — which Oxford res­i­dents say will increase traf­fic, flood­ing and green­house gas emis­sions — has been post­poned until 2009.

Local cam­paign­ers drew large crowds on Corn­mar­ket and around (and inside) the West­gate Cen­tre with the musi­cal stunt, which had a watery theme to raise aware­ness of the flood­ing risk to neigh­bour­hoods in West and South Oxford. They launched a new peti­tion, call­ing for a full Envi­ron­ment Agency flood­ing assess­ment for the expan­sion plans. The cam­paign­ers were also dis­trib­ut­ing a “Real Con­sul­ta­tion” doc­u­ment, to find out what Oxford res­i­dents real­ly want to see in the mid­dle of their city.

The protest had a fun and friend­ly air — a pair of pirates sailed around the City Cen­tre in a home-made boat as cam­paign­ers asked the crowd to “stop the West­gate pirates from sink­ing Oxford”. There was only one unpleas­ant moment, when a secu­ri­ty guard threat­ened to smash a pho­tog­ra­pher’s cam­era. The guard was report­ed to the West­gate Cen­tre man­ag­er.

One of the cam­paign­ers, Jess Worth,said “We’re in the Cen­tre today to start doing the con­sul­ta­tion that the City Coun­cil failed to do. We’re ask­ing Oxford res­i­dents what they want to see on this site — nine­ty new chain stores, or an eco-friend­ly devel­op­ment with afford­able homes, a bus sta­tion, a mar­ket­place and pub­lic green spaces?”

Accord­ing to the West­gate Part­ner­ship, build­ing work has been post­poned because a pub­lic enquiry into the demo­li­tion of Abbey Place, a street of shel­tered accom­mo­da­tion, won’t make its rul­ing on the legal­i­ty of the plans until May 2008. However,the Part­ner­ship have not yet explained why this requires a delay until 2009.

Dan­ny Chivers, a local res­i­dent and a mem­ber of the Oxford Against West­gate Expan­sion (OAWE) cam­paign, said: “This is great news- every month that the scheme is delayed gives Oxford res­i­dents more time to raise aware­ness about how bad the cur­rent plans are, and to put togeth­er some san­er alter­na­tives. It’s out­ra­geous that they start­ed felling trees in Jan­u­ary when the pub­lic enquiry had­n’t giv­en them the final go-ahead. Per­haps now they’ve realised that the many prob­lems with the scheme — that have been high­light­ed by our cam­paign — aren’t going to go away and need to be tak­en seri­ous­ly.”

ENDS

Notes for edi­tors:

* A full brief­ing, “What’s Wrong With The West­gate Expan­sion”, is avail­able at
http://westgatewatch.files.wordpress.com/2008/02/whats_wrong_with_westgate.pdf

* For inter­views and more information,contact
oxfordagainstwestgate@activist.com

http://westgatewatch.wordpress.com