18/02887/FUL

6500 Alec Issigonis Way Oxford Oxfordshire OX4 2JZ

4 December 2018

Change of use from hire centre (Sui Generis) to office, warehouse and ancillary retail and cafe (Sui Generis).

This proposal is for an innovative use intended to allow Oxfam to provide training and experience to long term unemployed women and prepare them for employment. It would employ on the site 13.5 FTE people, which is more than have been employed recently on the site in its former use as a hire centre. If the scheme were to be to any extent successful in its aims it would increase employment not only on site but enable some more women to become employed for the first time. In these circumstances OCS believe that the purposes of protecting the site as an employment site would be met albeit in a novel way. Couple with the willingness of the applicant Oxfam and the Arlington authorities to accept a condition, set out in Appendix 2 to the application papers, that would guard against the grant of permission for a small ancillary retail function on this site becoming a threat to the protection of the employment status of the wider Arlington site as a whole. The OCS encourage the LPA to look favourably on this application.