Sir – In reference to the lead article last week (Oxford least affordable city in UK), one cannot deny that Colin Cook’s (city council board member for development) assertion that the Cities Outlook report is a ‘wake up call’ is an appropriate comment in support of finding more land to build on.
However one has to question how much of this land has to be from Green Belt. There seems to be plenty of empty office space in Oxford and with the increase in Internet shopping there must be a limit to how many new sandwich bars the city can support; so perhaps there should be some change of use to allow the building of city apartments in these empty shells.
The council could also look to favouring an increase in the density of existing housing. There are many houses of zero architectural value occupying large plots and some of these could be demolished to allow building of several small houses.
Robert Mitchell, Oxford
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