If Oxford University doubts the offence it has caused with its accommodation blocks on the edge of Port Meadow it should glance at the names of eminent Oxford figures flocking to the ranks of the highly organised campaign to have the buildings reduced in height.

When The Oxford Times broke the story back in September, the former Oxford University ancient history professor Sir Fergus Millar described the university’s actions as “scandalous”.

Now Ann Spokes Symonds, a former Lord Mayor steeped in planning and Oxford history over decades, tells us: “Lovers of Port Meadow and their descendants will suffer for the rest of their lives”. How the university must now wish it had listened to those, many of whom had the university’s best interests at heart, back in the autumn instead of raising the blocks ever higher. Claims from the university and the city council that there had been wide consultation sounded increasingly hollow as the Oxford Civic Society and councillors themselves berated themselves for taking their eye off the ball. There will be more agonizing next week as the city council’s west area committee reviews its options with the roof now on. It all adds to the feeling that the university has got away with it, or that the university itself failed to recognise the visual impact of its scheme from the meadow. Many guessed the issue would come down to promises about trees and screening. But not a bit of it, with campaigners pressing ever harder for two storeys to be removed – and their potential to embarrass the university should not be under-estimated. Prince Charles’s visit to Oxford will prove the perfect opportunity to get the issue over to the wider world and almost certainly the Prince himself, whose view about the student blocks can easily be guessed at – and just imagine the impact if the Prince, no stranger to Oxford, were to join the debate.

The cost of removing those two storeys must be appearing slighter by the day.