The road was shut at the rail bridge in April 2023 for work linked to a major upgrade of Oxford rail station, and was due to reopen on August 31 this year.

After a gas leak was discovered close to the new rail bridge, which was installed in February, the road’s reopening was postponed until September 20.

READ MORE: Timetable for station needed after Botley Road disaster

Ms Moran, MP for Oxford West and Abingdon, said last week she felt so “frustrated” on behalf of residents and businesses that she wanted to “pick up a shovel and pitch in herself”.

The cost of the work so far has risen from an estimated £161m to about £237m.

Now, following a public meeting last night at Lula’s cafe, where the ongoing closure of Botley Road was discussed, Ms Moran said she was referring the project to the National Audit Office, an independent public spending watchdog which holds the Government to account.

Network Rail work in Frideswide Square (Image: Oxford Mail)

She said: “The Botley Road project has been a complete shambles and has repeatedly blown through budgets and deadlines for reopening.

“We must not make the same mistakes in future, and there is a lot that can be learnt from the gross incompetence of how this project was scoped, planned and managed.

“I have therefore written to the National Audit Office and called for an investigation into the delivery of the project.”

The road closure, which was initially expected to last only six months, has caused years of misery for local residents and businesses.

Some businesses have shut permanently as a result of the road closure, and it is estimated that businesses in the area have lost, in total, at least £20m and possibly as much as £50m.

Ms Moran added that she was seeking meetings with Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander and has written to the National Audit Office to ensure it looked at the project as an example of what happened when a project went “catastrophically wrong”.

She added: “With luck, one day we will get together and laugh about what happened along the Botley Road but for now it really is no laughing matter – it is a disaster and until it reopens I will not believe that it will.”

Baroness Deech (Image: Wikimedia Commons)

Baroness Deech, who lives in Oxford, called for compensation to be paid to local businesses which have lost money as a result of the road closure, and added she wanted to see a new western entrance at the station, and a new platform five – both have been promised by Network Rail.

Baroness Deech will ask the Government what is the original, and current, estimated completion date of the update to Oxford station, including the new western entrance and platform five. 

Work is not thought to have started properly on either the new entrance or a new platform five.

Network Rail work in Botley Road (Image: Oxford Mail)

Rail industry expert Paul Clifton said at the meeting that government funding for the western entrance could be in doubt, due to funding demands from other major rail infrastructure projects in the UK.

He added: “However you measure the Oxford project, it has gone spectacularly badly. And it has cost significantly more than anyone expected. 

“That raises an important question. Money is a really big problem. There isn’t any.

An artist’s impression of the new western entrance at Oxford rail station (Image: Network Rail)

“The railway receives an extraordinary amount of public money. But be in no doubt: increasingly difficult times are ahead. The railway will be doing less with less.”

A Network Rail spokesman said details regarding the new western entrance have not yet been confirmed.

Lula’s cafe in Frideswide Square (Image: Andy Ffrench)

He added: “We fully acknowledge the impact this project has had on people’s daily lives, businesses and journeys and understand the strength of feeling. 

“We apologise for the ongoing disruption and remain focused on completing the remaining work and reopening Botley Road to traffic on Sunday. September 20.

“We have committed to being open about the challenges we’ve faced, to keep people updated and focus on delivering the work that’s needed to reopen the road.”

That’s exactly the cost to Groove Armada’s Andy Cato and Tom Findlay, the electronic music duo who achieved massive success with dance hits including Superstylin’ and I See You Baby.

Although 30 years of subjecting their ears to extremely loud music has damaged both men’s hearing, they’re re still regularly performing DJ sets at gigs and festivals throughout the UK and internationally to thousands of new and old fans.

But the difference these days is that their hearing is protected during the gigs, and while Findlay, 53, now wears hearing aids to bolster his damaged hearing,

Cato, also 53 and operates a farm on the Oxfordshire-Wiltshire border, has to endure the incessant ringing in the ears caused by tinnitus.

Groove Armada’s Tom Findlay (left) and Andy Cato (Image: Stewart Williams/PA)

Findlay says: “I knew I had chronic hearing loss – I was often having to ask people to repeat stuff, and almost tuning out of conversations, particularly in environments where there was a lot of background noise or reverberation. I was really struggling to pick things up.

“I’ve probably been struggling with problematic hearing loss since my late 30s to early 40s. So I knew it was there, and I was slightly in denial.”

But he eventually had a hearing test about 18 months ago, and has been wearing hearing aids when necessary since then.

“Wearing hearing aids seems like something people feel a bit of stigma about, and it’d be good to take that out of it because it’s been transformative for me.” he admits.

But why does he think there’s so much stigma around wearing hearing aids?

“It’s associated with ageing, and we’re all a bit uncomfortable about that,” he observes. “It’s about a sense of frailty – there’s some discomfort about that in a way that’s quite different from the way we feel about glasses.

“Glasses can be a sexy accessory, can’t they? But hearing aids definitely aren’t.

“We’re all wearing earpods now most of the time, so they just look like that. And while I used to put off social situations where I knew I’d struggle, I don’t do that any more, and that’s great – it gives you a lot more confidence.”

Andy Cato from Groove Armada performing at the Isle of Wight Festival in 2007. (Image: Stewart Williams/PA)

It’s a slightly different story for Cato and his tinnitus, and he says: “I think you have to live with it, so the ideal thing would be to stop it in the first place.”

He explains that when they’re DJing, he and Findlay stand between two huge sets of speakers that are separate to the main speakers in the club or on the festival stage.

In the early days of their career, he recalls: “We’d come out of clubs and it would be funny that we could stand outside the door and not be able to hear each other.”

Findlay says in those days they gave no thought to any damage the excessive noise may have been doing to their hearing. But eventually they started wearing in-ear monitors, and then hearing protection.

“Now, when we DJ, we both wear hearing protection, which is essentially filtering out the real low-end frequencies which do a lot of the damage that don’t necessarily add to your experience massively,” he says.

“You just don’t get that real thudding stuff, and that means when we’ve done a gig, we don’t leave with our ears ringing.”

Groove Armada’s Tom Findlay (left) and Andy Cato (Image: Stewart Williams/PA)

“I do!” interjects Cato, referring to the ringing of his tinnitus.

“Well, Andy does,” says Findlay with a chuckle. “I don’t.

“So we’re doing some damage, but a lot less damage than we would have done before. If we’re going to prolong our careers, protecting our hearing is going to be a necessity for us.”

The pair are hoping to help start more discussions about hearing loss, protecting hearing and reducing the stigma of wearing hearing aids, and they’ve teamed up with Specsavers to encourage over-50s to take a quick online hearing test which will give them the chance to get on ‘The Testlist’ to secure tickets for exclusive music events. Groove Armada will headline the inaugural Testlist event at London’s Phonox on October 15.

The duo, who formed Groove Armada in 1996, are squeezing the performance in among upcoming tour dates in the UK, Spain, Ibiza and the US, and Cato says: “We’ve got an incredibly busy summer yet again – it’s an amazing privilege to be still doing this 30 years later.”

And although many of their original fans are from the Nineties rave generation, younger people are also loving their music – Cato says the average age of their last gig was about 20.

“It was absolutely wild energy – amazing,” he says. “We’re playing music made last week, and it still feels really vibey.”

But despite such a packed touring schedule, both men have secondary careers too. Cato owns a farm in France and rents a National Trust farm in Oxfordshire, using regenerative farming methods, and he’s the co-founder of Wildfarmed, a sustainable food and farming business.

It is a 729-acre National trust plot on the Buscot and Coleshill estate.

“It’s very, very full on,” he says. “The nub of it is that we farm in a way which can make us far more resilient to droughts and floods, and that will massively help nature recovery.”

The farming focuses on wheat, oats and barley, and Cato says: “I’ve definitely got a pretty endless supply of excellent bread, and I’ve got a little veg patch in the garden of the farm – although it’s getting a bit neglected.

“When you combine our gig and harvest schedule with drought, it gets a little bit tricky to keep those leaves going.”

Findlay has also found his own “side hustle” has had to take more of a back seat because Groove Armada is still so popular. After an extended period of depression around 2010, he had cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) which helped him so much he decided to become a therapist himself.

“Probably for a lot of it [the depression] I didn’t even know that’s what I was experiencing because I don’t think we were having the conversations openly around mental health at that time that we are, thankfully, now.”

He worked in the NHS as a counsellor, and then at King’s College London, but he’s just decided to leave there, and explains: “I partly trained because I thought all these gigs were going to come to an end and I thought I needed a side hustle, but the gigs have been better than ever and people keep coming. So I’m going to carry on counselling but in a voluntary capacity.

“It’s quite hard when you’re trying to combine that with making tunes and gigs. I just never felt like I had any downtime. But I’ve loved doing it – it’s an amazing thing to share experiences with people and help them make important changes in their life.”

And as well as loving being a therapist, Findlay says the training helped him personally too, explaining: “Now I occasionally get moments where I don’t feel great, but I’m able to self-correct and find ways of thinking and ways of behaving that are really helpful.”

For a chance of getting free tickets to Groove Armada’s set at London’s Phonox on October 15, take the over-50s online hearing screener and get your name on The Testlist by September 13.

Michael, spent most of his life in care. However, after he returned home from university his relationship broke down with his foster parents – forcing him into sofa surfing and eventually on to the streets.

After a few months, he got in contact with Centrepoint, who were able to place him into accommodation and help him find a job. It was here that Michael started working at The Co-operative Bank, through it’s Brick by Brick scheme, and he hasn’t looked back since.

He said: “Over two years I applied for 400 jobs. It was demoralising because I really wanted to work but couldn’t as employers would either say I was too experienced or not experienced enough.

“Thankfully, Centrepoint and The Co-operative Bank were able to support me into this job now and I love it. Everyone’s friendly and supportive and it’s given me a purpose, as opposed to just existing.”

Brick by Brick, launched earlier this year, is a pioneering early careers programme, designed to support young people into sustainable work and move on from homelessness for good.

It provides a steady, structured journey starting with employability workshops, and then progressing to the Get Set Go Programme which provides six days classroom learning, mock interviews, professional behaviour guidance, and an introduction to the Bank’s values.

After this, a young person will then complete work experience at the Bank which, if successful, is followed by an employment offer, removing the pressure of formal interviews. The program ends with an optional apprenticeship and keep in touch days, designed to improve preparedness between a job offer and start date.

The initiative has had 35 young people participating in various steps so far with several securing permanent employment in the Bank’s Contact Centre.

Michael is one of these, and discussing the skills it has given him, he said: “Communication, multitasking, timekeeping, but most importantly, confidence.

“I’ve gone from thinking ‘Why would a company want me’ to now thinking ‘Why wouldn’t they’.”

With over one million young people currently not in education or employment, Brick by Brick is reshaping conversations about homelessness by refusing to define young people by their experiences, instead investing in their potential and honouring their needs.

“By meeting young people where they’re at, we can close the opportunity gap that holds too many back from reaching their potential,” said Anna Cuskin, the Bank’s Social Impact Lead. “Everyone deserves the chance to succeed. With the right support, young people can gain confidence, find meaningful employment and build a future beyond homelessness.”

HMO has given me ‘sense of purpose’ says man at risk of homelessness

A man who was at risk of homelessness has told us how a new home gave him a ‘sense of purpose.’

Kai, 22, was living with his dad before overcrowding at home forced him to find somewhere else to live, he said: “It was a really worrying time. I didn’t know where to go or who to turn to.”

Fortunately, Kai was able to get in contact with Centrepoint where through the Rent Deposits Scheme, funded by Nationwide Building Society, he was able to find a place in a House In Multiple Occupation (HMO). 

“It’s given me the stability to rebuild my life and slowly I’m getting back on track.

“One day I’d like to live in a house of my own, by a river, on my own plot of land, and do what I want with it.

“That’s my dream and I feel like if I keep sticking at it, I’ll be able to eventually achieve it.”

However, young people in Kai’s situation may not be so fortunate – research by Centrepoint has found there has been a 10% fall in HMOs since 2019, with 458,000 in 24/25 compared to 510, 776 in 19/20.

When asked if he had any advice for young people going through something similar, Kai said: “Don’t give up. It might be hard, but right now, your best bet is to keep pushing forward and look for any form of help where you possibly can. Just keep going.”

PM’s pledge to end rough sleeping gets early boost

(Image: Centrepoint)

The Prime Minister’s pledge to end rough sleeping has been given an early boost after the number of young people sleeping rough in London dropped by almost half.

Between April and June 2026, 202 18–25-year-olds in London were recorded as sleeping rough. This was a 45% decrease from the same quarter last year when 368 young people were reported.

The youth homelessness charity Centrepoint said this was cause for celebration and called the number proof that the Prime Minister’s pledge could be achieved.

Lisa Doyle, the charity’s Head of Policy and Public Affairs, said: “London is providing the blueprint for what can be achieved when political leaders has the vision and intent to end street homelessness.

“These figures are a real cause for celebration, but the job is not done. The Mayor of London and the Government must continue these efforts until rough sleeping is reduced to as close to zero as possible, and anyone forced onto the streets is helped off them quickly.

However, the charity warned that ending street sleeping alone is not enough. “We must also remember that homelessness does not begin and end with rough sleeping.” Lisa said, “For every person on the streets, many thousands more are living in insecure or unsafe situations. To avoid reversing this positive trend, the Government must now also address the causes and consequences of those experiences too, and step up efforts to prevent homelessness.”

Months of heat ‘life threatening’ for homeless people says charity

A charity has warned that homeless people’s lives are ‘at risk’ due to the past few months of high temperatures.

It comes after August saw another flurry of heatwaves – regularly rising over 30 degrees across the country. The UK’s leading youth homelessness charity, Centrepoint, believes council should do more to protect those sleeping rough when it’s this hot.

Lisa Doyle, Head of Policy and Public Affairs, said: “This weather is life threatening for those forced to sleep on the streets.

“And while many councils do activate protocols to protect those sleeping rough, there is no legal requirement for local authorities to provide shelter for everyone during severe weather. This must change.”

“Ultimately, street homelessness is just the tip of the iceberg – the best way to keep people safe is to reduce homelessness however it is experienced.”