South Hinksey Parish Council email request.

The Council is submitting a further request to adjust its southern boundary with the parish of Kennington.

The Council has no wish to change the name or style of this parish, nor the number of its councillors and the warding arrangements, both of which were changed at the last review and for which this Council was most grateful.

This Council does not propose any merger or grouping of parishes.

The change it seeks is relatively minor, a small and sensible boundary adjustment of just the kind for which these reviews are intended.

The Council is aware that two previous requests have been rejected and the same reason has been given on both occasions.

The Council has been advised by a district councillor that, no matter the merits of the argument, these requests would inevitably have been rejected when the new boundary that this Council proposed was simply an arbitrary line drawn on a map that did not correspond to anything visible on the ground.

Accordingly, the Council is proposing that the new southern boundary run along a watercourse, a track and the A34 all visible both on maps and on the ground.

I have attached a map showing the new boundary that this Council puts forward but, if the basic case is accepted for a change, this Council is more than willing to accept a slightly different boundary if your authority sees a compelling argument for a different boundary that better addresses the need for change.

This proposed boundary change would mean a slightly larger area would be transferred from one parish to the other than has been suggested in the past but the real purpose is unchanged: to transfer the site of the former Westwood Hotel from the parish of Kennington into this Council's Hinksey Hill ward to which it really belongs, in the opinion of this Council.
Once the new houses proposed for the site are constructed, the bus stop the residents will use to travel into Oxford will be in this parish but to reach it and the southbound bus stop, they will have to walk along a section of path in the parish of Kennington which this Council has maintained, with Kennington's agreement, for many years.

At the northbound bus stop they will wait next to a South Hinksey Parish Council noticeboard that carries the notices of all this Council's meetings.

All the nearest neighbours of the new houses will be residents of this parish.
The concerns about traffic along the road past their homes are ones this Council has pursued resolutely over many years.

In all practical senses, the new residents will feel themselves part of the Hinksey Hill community but, unless the boundary is amended as this Council proposes, they will be left outside this parish.

It is entirely understandable that Kennington has never spent money maintaining the path to and from this site when it is so far removed from the village that forms the heart of that parish. But the site is at the heart of the Hinksey Hill ward, and this Council asks that the boundary be moved so that the site becomes part of this ward and the interests of the residents can be properly represented by this Council alongside their neighbours already in this parish.