A conservation group has slammed plans for a new office building and replacement car park at Stansfeld Park. 

The Oxford Trust CEO Steve Burgess has submitted the application for the site in Quarry Road. 

Headington Heritage has criticised the plans, describing them as 'insensitive' and thoughtless'. 

No other public objections have been submitted. 

Mark Pott, of Headington Heritage, said: “This is a surprisingly thoughtless, insensitive, environmentally unfriendly and car-entitled application by The Oxford Trust which had a golden opportunity to achieve meaningful and desperately needed modal shift of the nearly 80 per cent of current employees who use cars at the site.

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Site plan (Image: Oxford City Council) “I would urge the Oxford Trust to withdraw this application and reconsider.”

He added: “It is extraordinary that Oxford City Council in its pre-application advice did not seek a reduction in parking as per the current Local Plan.

“If this is considered acceptable, then each and every one of the very many impending large-scale developments in Headington will add to the traffic chaos, each using its car-entitlement, based on 1970s parking solutions, to perpetuate the same in 2024.

“Planning approval should not be granted until the Thames Water SWT upgrade has been completed which will be many years away, and then judged against the then Local Plan.”

The application's planning statement said the new building would be of a high environmental standard. 

It said: “The proposed building to be known as Aspen, will expand on the success of the Wood Centre for Innovation by providing additional R&D labs and offices for science and tech grow-on companies.

"In addition, there will be a new resources and preparation room to allow The Oxford Trust to expand its STEM outreach programme to schools and communities across Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire.”

It added: “The building has been designed to be aesthetically pleasing whilst being a sustainable and energy efficient buildings which achieves BREEAM Excellent.

"Appropriate surface water drainage of the site will be achieved as well as foul drainage being dealt with appropriately.

“In accordance with Policy G2 it has been demonstrated that there is an exceptional need for the new development and the need cannot be met by development on an alternative site with less biodiversity interest and a significant increase in biodiversity will be achieved at the site significantly well in excess of the 10 per cent required by the Environment Act and as such there is an argument for the loss of a very small part of the Proposed Oxford City Wildlife Site.”