The shopping centre was given a £440m revamp in 2017, with the addition of 100 new shops and restaurants, an anchor store John Lewis, and a rooftop terrace and cinema.

Westgate Oxford supported 1,527 jobs across Landsec, its retail partners and businesses operating at the destination retail centre.

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It also helped 110 people move closer to employment through initiatives such as employability partnerships, which provide valuable industry experience, and work placements.

The research also found the centre delivered £1.3m in ‘social value’ in 2025 through investment in local communities and employment initiatives, including bursaries, community grants, volunteering and partnerships.

Clare Martin, centre director at Westgate Oxford, said: “Retail destinations are part of the fabric of the communities they serve. They help local businesses grow, create employment opportunities and provide places where people can come together, connect and spend time.

“The findings published today demonstrate the important contribution Westgate Oxford continues to make to Oxford. By investing in the destination, supporting employment, working with community partners and operating more sustainably, we’re helping businesses and communities thrive. In turn, that attracts further investment, supports long-term growth and creates lasting value for the local area.”

Clare Martin, centre director of Westgate Oxford (Image: Westgate Oxford)

Alongside its economic and social contribution, the centre continues to invest in a more sustainable future.

In 2025, the destination reduced its energy intensity by 24%, reflecting Landsec’s commitment to creating places that deliver lasting value for local communities and the environment.

Sustainability goals also shaped the centre’s community initiatives during the year with the ‘Made in Oxford’ enterprise challenge inviting students from four local schools to explore creative placemaking and environmental sustainability to reimagine their local retail space.

A commitment to the environment was supported by on-site initiatives, keeping the centre ahead of UK environmental legislation by increasing recycling rates and empowering guests to reduce single-use plastic consumption through the ‘Refill Me’ scheme.

Alongside these local programmes, Westgate Oxford maintained strong commercial momentum through 2025, strengthening its retail offering and driving visitor numbers with the arrival of new brands including the region’s first store from beauty brand Sephora and much-loved burger restaurant The Beefy Boys, alongside larger stores and investment from Goldsmiths, Superdrug, and Oliver Bonas.

Retailer confidence in the centre and the city remains strong through 2026 with the recent arrivals of both Lego and David Clulow, and global fashion brand Bershka set to open its first Oxfordshire store at the shopping centre later this year, offering even more choice for guests.

Sentinel ICCS has selected Macrium as its standard backup and recovery supplier, with deployment delivered through channel partner Clarion.

The agreement covers the industrial and operational technology environments Sentinel ICCS designs, secures and supports for customers in critical infrastructure sectors, including oil and gas, power, utilities, manufacturing and marine operations.

Formerly known as Eldor, Sentinel ICCS focuses on industrial control systems, operational technology and cybersecurity. Its customer environments often include legacy or unsupported systems, fully air-gapped networks and sites with no dedicated on-site IT support.

These conditions create recovery challenges when equipment fails. In some cases, replacement hardware or software is no longer available, making backup and restoration central to operational continuity.

Macrium said Sentinel ICCS chose its product because it can run backup and recovery processes without interrupting operational networks. The companies highlighted configurable network throttling, which allows backups to take place without affecting plant traffic.

Legacy systems

This matters in environments where industrial systems must remain available and many assets are ageing. In these settings, recovery tools must work within operational constraints rather than impose new ones on production systems.

By standardising on Macrium, Sentinel ICCS will use the product across the customer estates it supports where recovery speed and reliability are essential. The arrangement also gives it a single backup and recovery approach across multiple client environments.

“Our customers rely on technology that simply can’t afford to fail,” said Dave Joyce, chief executive officer of Macrium Software.

“The environments Sentinel ICCS supports present some of the toughest recovery challenges, with legacy systems, air-gapped networks and no margin for error. We’re proud that Sentinel ICCS has chosen Macrium to help ensure its customers recover quickly and confidently when it matters most,” Joyce said.

Sentinel ICCS said its work often involves industrial infrastructure running on software that is no longer commercially available, leaving operators with limited options if a system outage affects a critical process.

“We often protect critical infrastructure running on software you simply cannot buy anymore,” said Carl Townsend, managing director of Sentinel ICCS.

“If one of those systems fails, there often is not a replacement, so recovery has to work,” Townsend said.

Recovery focus

Macrium’s SiteBackup product will be used for central deployment and management of backup and recovery across the environments supported by Sentinel ICCS. The setup is intended to help manage dispersed or restricted sites from a central point.

The challenge is particularly acute in air-gapped environments, where systems are deliberately isolated from wider networks for security reasons. Such systems can be harder to maintain and recover because routine remote administration options are limited or unavailable.

Sentinel ICCS also linked the selection to service delivery, saying dependable recovery underpins the resilience it provides to infrastructure customers and supports its record on service-level agreement renewals.

“Macrium gives us the confidence that recovery will be there when we need it,” said Purna Kiran Mopidevi, service manager and cybersecurity specialist at Sentinel ICCS.

“There are a lot of tools that can take backups, but the ability to recover is what defines your cyber resilience,” Mopidevi said.

The decision reflects a broader emphasis in industrial cybersecurity on restoration as well as prevention. Operators of critical infrastructure increasingly have to plan how they will bring systems back after failures in environments where downtime can affect safety, output and essential services.

Macrium said other industrial groups, including Volvo, Sysmex and ABB, also use its products in operational technology and critical infrastructure settings. In Sentinel ICCS’s case, the focus is on environments where older systems and network isolation make recovery planning unusually complex.

The troubled supplier forked out more than £4 million in bonuses and boosted its chief executive pay to £1.2 million, new figures have shown.

Britain’s biggest water firm – which has been left on the brink of nationalisation as it struggles under a £20 billion debt pile – revealed in its annual report that bonuses of £4.09 million were paid to “key management personnel” as part of its so-called management retention plan.

It said the bonuses were made to board members and executives over the year to March 31, up from £2.8 million the previous year, and included performance-related and retention awards.

READ MORE: Thames Water profit, debt and bills all rise

The report also showed chief executive Chris Weston’s total pay rose to £1.16 million in the year to March 31, up from £1.04 million in 2024-45 after he picked up a £99,000 retention payment deferred from a previous year.

His basic pay was also hiked by 14 per cent from April 1 this year to £995,000.

Environment Secretary Emma Reynolds took aim at the Thames Water pay-outs, saying it adds to evidence that suppliers are side-stepping bans on bosses’ bonuses.

She said: “It’s outrageous that one of the worst-performing water companies is handing out bonuses and inflation-busting pay rises to its executives.

“It flies in the face of basic fairness, and the British public are right to be furious.

“We’ve banned bonuses for polluting water bosses and will be taking action to prevent bonuses by any other name.”

Last year’s Water (Special Measures) Act allowed regulator Ofwat to ban performance-related bonuses for bosses at utilities failing customers and the environment as part of the Government’s wider response to cracking down on the ailing sector.

Mr Weston said his £99,000 retention bonus was awarded before the Water (Special Measures) Act came into effect in June last year and the group confirmed he did not receive a performance-related pay-out for 2025-26.

But the firm has already caused controversy over retention payments to senior executives, seen as evading the ban.

It agreed last December amid outcry to pause £2.46 million of these payments to 21 top bosses – not thought to include Mr Weston – until further notice, having already paid out a similar amount earlier in the year.

In its annual report, Thames Water’s remuneration committee said: “The committee fully accepts and complies with the legal and regulatory position on performance-related pay but is concerned that the constraints now operating materially limit the extent to which the scale and challenge of the transformation being delivered can be reflected in total remuneration.

“The committee believes this creates a real risk to the retention of experienced leaders with the capability to deliver this transformation in exceptionally challenging circumstances.”