I contacted the planning department after a recent SPD meeting where some people spoke with certainty that the application decision was delayed while Vale reviewed the closure of the petrol station, because that wasn’t my understanding.

The petrol closure is a business decision by the owners there (whether the landowners or the business owners, I don’t know). It’s closure not germane to the planning application so ownership isn’t addressed. (I think the reason the petrol station closure is mentioned at all is there is an element of clean-up that has some rules about it. BIMBW.)

In my consultation response for the current planning application, I raised two main concerns. One was that a condition on the original development many years ago that there was to be no food sales allowed there, so as not to complete with West Way businesses. (The planning officer now tells me that they are exploring this condition with respect to the new development, but since we don’t know what the new development will be, that’s not too clear. I expect they are looking for justification to allow food to be sold at Seacourt Retail Centre there in spite of the prohibition many years ago. There’s little joined up thinking, as we very well know.)

I also raised the problem of no controlled pedestrian access to the centre, and no signaled car access. I have no clue if they’ve explored that.

But neither of these things is the petrol station.

Over the years, there has been a lot of complaining about the petrol station closure and I’ve sing in that chorus, I claim that petrol stations should also somehow be protected as community assets; surely they are at least as important as pubs. It falls on deaf ears; Tories just use it as a way to take a personal jab at me. In a recent full council meeting, I expressed my view that it was an environmental sustainability issue for the community, that we would now have to drive miles on the congested A34 to fill our tanks. It’s eve a worse situation with the closure of the Esso in Oxpens Road. I think it’s also a constraint to how many people realistically will to their weekly shop at the new centre here in Botley. Most of us fill the tank with fuel when we fill the boot with groceries. More deaf ears.

In my opinion, if anything can be done, its via the owners there (landowners probably).

An friendly, business-based approach to the landower might gain something. Now that the Business Forum is going, maybe that’s the vehicle. (Well done on getting that up and running by the way!I hadn’t thought of the impact of this loss on local car-based businesses. Maybe that would sway the owners to think again.)