Sir – There are currently 33,000 students based in Oxford — the combined populations of the University of Oxford and Oxford Brookes University.
Thirty-three thousand students must live somewhere, and preferably not in multi-occupied privately rented houses, inflating rents and property prices in the residential areas of East Oxford.
Are the North Oxford protestors who are campaigning against the student flats in Roger Dudman Way, overlooking Port Meadow, prepared to have half the houses in their own streets occupied by short-stay students who contribute little or nothing to the local community? No, I thought not.
It was a big mistake back in 1992 to allow Oxford Polytechnic, which offered practical, vocational courses to local home-based students, to turn itself into a full-blown university, attracting large numbers of students from outside the city who compete for living space with members of the older-established university. But they are here now, and all 33,000 must somehow be accommodated.
Instead of seeking to involve the city council and the University of Oxford in an expensive legal battle to force the removal of two storeys from the controversial flats, perhaps the campaigners would be content if the dazzling white exteriors of the buildings were toned down by the application of a coat of green paint?
C. M. Robinson, Oxford
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