Cotswold Woollen Weavers has said it is offering “heavily discounted” products as its permanent closure at the end of May approaches.

On social media, the popular West Oxfordshire business said there was a rail of sports coats and jackets currently available.

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It said: “We are still heading towards ‘closing to the public’ at the end of May, and we have a rail of sports coats/jackets in a variety of wool and other natural fibres…and all heavily discounted.

“We are open 10am to 6pm every Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. Do please drop in…still a lot of stock, and all discounted.”

The shop is the last place in in the Cotswolds where traditional wool textiles are still made and has operated from a historic 18th century barn in the village of Filkins since 1982.

A loom used in traditional weaving (Image: NQ)

As well as the store, the site includes a café and museum, and throughout its life has been run by 73-year-old Richard Martin.

On why the business is closing, he said: “Partly because I’m older, and partly because things change and one thinks about other things.

“I’ve been very pleased to do it here, I’ve had a good life and a good time doing what we’re doing, but I guess things change.”

Richard Martin, owner of Cotswold Woollen Weavers, at Witney Blanket Hall in 2015 (Image: NQ)

For the past 15 years, Mr Martin’s wife Trish has joined him working in the Cotswolds, and the two of them saw the opening of the Witney Blanket Hall on the town’s High Street in 2015.

The blanket hall served as the historic workshop and heart of the Witney blanket trade for some 120 years from 1721, and was reinstated as a culture and heritage centre, and a seller of woven wool blankets, by the Cotswolds company.

Witney Blanket Hall will remain open when Cotswold Woollen Weavers closes, as will Mr Martin’s other weaving business in Huddersfield, Yorkshire, which continues making wool with traditional techniques and has supplied the Cotswolds business for the past five years.

Mr Martin said: “We wove at Cotswold Woollen Weavers for 35 years but stopped that full time about five or so years ago.

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“It was principally because I either had to do everything myself or teach people from scratch – there’s no one around who can already weave or spin.

“Any of the weavers you bring down from West Yorkshire or Wales just can’t afford the house prices here in the Cotswolds – they’re two or three times the price as over there.”

Even so, the Cotswolds centre has remained the hub for the business, where Mr Martin has designed the textiles, produced samples, and greeted visitors.

Cloud communications promise a lot, including flexibility, agility and control. But when it comes time to review, businesses suddenly find that they’re more tied to a vendor than expected. They’ve fallen into the trap of ‘vendor lock in’.

Rather than flexibility, many organisations instead found dependency. Changing provider, platform or operating model became harder than it needed to be. The promise of control turned out to be just a promise.

It comes down to architectural dependency, rather than cloud technology itself. If numbering, routing and call control are combined into a single platform, every future change becomes a transformation programme. Changes should never become an operational decision.

Organisations should be in firm control of their own communications estate. By following these four non-negotiables, these organisations will be the ones leading their communications strategy.

Agility: Change without interruption

Modernisation doesn’t necessarily mean replacement. If change turns out to mean rebuild, then agility wasn’t designed in to begin with.

It’s rare for organisations to change one system at a time. Collaboration platforms, networks and operating models all evolve at different speeds. If voice depends on a single platform decision, then every change introduces service risk.

Long-term hybrid estates must be supported as standard. Vendors should be looking to implement interoperability across cloud platforms, legacy PBX and on‑premises systems. When it does come time to introduce new collaboration tools, voice shouldn’t end up being totally redesigned.

The expectation should be that the communications estate can evolve incrementally without service interruption. In turn, platform choice remains a business decision, as opposed to a technical constraint.

When speaking to vendors, businesses should think about how vendors can support hybrid estates beyond migration. If these organisations change platforms in the future, then what could potentially have to be rebuilt?

Control: Governance, visibility and compliance built in

Cloud communications should reduce operational overhead, not obscure it.

In many estates, ownership is fragmented and dependencies are undocumented. During incidents or supplier changes, these issues tend to surface and increase both risk and delay. When there’s a loss in visibility, a loss of control follows.

IT teams should be the ones retaining governance and operational authority, regardless of platform complexity or supplier changes.

Vendors need to offer platforms that centralise the management for numbers, routing and configuration. There must be clear visibility through analytics, reporting and monitoring, with additional support for recording, retention and compliance as standard.

Consider where else vendors have seen operational friction in communications estates. Can their architecture reduce tool sprawl and remove that friction?

Value: Business impact, not just connectivity

Voice and unified communications are often treated as utilities. In practice, they can directly impact productivity, service quality and reputation.

Invoices rarely contain the cost of dependency. Instead, this cost appears in the form of workarounds, duplicated tooling, delayed change or operational friction. Organisations end up adapting to the platform, but it should be the other way round.

Communications should enhance operational efficiency. If change is limited or hidden costs are being created, then something’s wrong.

The experience must be consistent across all channels. A communications ecosystem should support both customer and employee workflows. But above all, the potential for operational friction and duplicated tools must be reduced.

Vendors should have an answer ready when asked about how to decouple numbering and rooting from collaboration tools. Where does the real operational value come from?

Future‑proofing: Designed to adapt

A well-designed communications estate is one that absorbs change. These estates shouldn’t end up creating the need for transformation programmes.

Voice platforms tend to be rebuilt infrequently, mainly because change is high‑risk and knowledge is lost over time. All this does is create dependency on ageing systems and specialist skills, while increasing reliance on vendor roadmaps.

Platforms should support future change. Large-scale replacement or provider-dictated transformation aren’t viable options.

Future-proof estates are the ones that are scalable across regions, carriers and regulatory environments. They need to be able to integrate with existing PBX and specialist systems, and new capabilities can be added seamlessly

When change in the future does finally come, will it be customer-controlled or roadmap-dependent? How do vendors ensure that, when adding new capabilities, service disruption is avoided?

Making the four non‑negotiables your baseline

These four non-negotiables are operational requirements, not premium capabilities. If a proposal can’t demonstrate them clearly, all it does is introduce service risk, regardless of feature set.

When done properly, a cloud communications platform lowers transformation risk instead of centralising it. If leaving a platform requires transformation, rather than migration, then control sits outside of the organisation.

For any organisation reviewing their UC strategy or preparing an RFP, these non‑negotiables are the baseline criteria. Vendors like Gamma are there to help businesses assess their current estate against them, while identifying where dependency risk exists before committing to any changes.

Communications don’t sit in isolation. Any decisions impacting communications now intersect with the likes of network architecture, security posture, and customer experience.

The greatest long-term value lies in a provider who understands how voice, connectivity and security operate together.  An ideal provider supports transformation across the wider estate. Transformation shouldn’t be concentrated to just a single platform layer.

If you’re looking to review your current communications environment, reach out to Gamma Communications for insights around control and dependency.

A deal between the stadium and Bizcap Limited was announced on May 8, which will see the assignment of book debts to the lender based in London.

This means that Oxford Stadium’s outstanding customer invoices will be transferred to Bizcap UK in exchange for immediate cash flow.

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Part of a global non-bank business lending organisation, Bizcap UK says it specialises in offering “fast and flexible” funding to small and medium sized businesses.

This latest announcement comes amid reported financial challenges at the Sandy Lane stadium, which is over five months overdue on submitting its financial accounts to Companies House.

Oxford Stadium (Image: Oxford Speedway)

In April, Sports Information Services decided to stop covering greyhound racing at the stadium, due to financial difficulties, a decision which also impacted Oxford Speedway, a team that uses the venue.

However, last week Oxford Speedway said its long-term future at the BetGoodwin Oxford stadium was ‘secured’.

Jamie Courtenay, promoter for Oxford Speedway, said he was “delighted to confirm that following extensive negotiations the long-term future of Oxford Speedway at the BetGoodwin Oxford Stadium is secured”.

Kevin Boothby is the managing director of Oxford Stadium

Two new investors joined the team, both “major sponsors” since 2022 and “already a huge part of Oxford’s success story”.

In its latest accounts – which are to the end of 2023 – Oxford Stadium was found to have creditors worth £2,005,715 at the end of 2023, according a financial statement released at the end of 2024.

These are short-term liabilities that have to be paid within the 12 months after the accounts are dated.

Oxford Speedway legends Sam Masters and Scott Nicholls (Image: Steve Edmunds)

In its statement for the year to December 31, 2023, it listed £108,077 worth of trade creditors, £68,399 for taxation and social security, £23,180 on accruals and deferred income and £1,806,059 of other creditors.

The total was significantly more than the financial document lists for the end of 2022 when its short-term creditors was listed at £1,260,559.

READ MORE: Oxford Stadium £2m in debt and 2 months late on accounts

Its latest accounts – for the year end 2024 – are almost half a year late and the Government does charge private companies for late submission of accounts with the penalty possibly rising to £1,500 if the accounts remain absent.

Despite its reported financial difficulties Oxford Stadium is still running events and offering hospitality packages for 2026.

In 2022, the venue relaunched after a regeneration project which saw £1 million invested including into kennel and veterinary facilities.

More recently, it has been confirmed as a filming destination for Mobland, a “popular returning TV drama that follows the fates and fortunes of a London crime family” starring Pierce Brosnan.