Sir – The winter newsletter from the Oxford Preservation Trust contains, as usual, much of interest. One thing that struck me was a statement made on page 7: “The Port Meadow Buildings will not be lowered, despite the campaigners’ best efforts.”

The judge in the recent court case told the University and the city council that, in conducting the full Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) that they were now agreeing to make, they should mirror the statutory regulations governing EIAs “as closely as if this was the planning application”.

The height of the blocks would certainly be a matter for consideration if the EIA were being made before planning approval was given, as should have happened; so it should be under consideration now.

When I contacted Mrs Debbie Dance, the trust’s director, about the newsletter statement, her reply was that it: ‘was not intended to assume the outcome...but instead to set out the positive contribution that OPT can make to the debate’.

In the Oxford Magazine for Second Week, Professor Sir Fergus Millar wrote: “This generation cannot leave as its contribution to the evolution of the city a line of ugly and obtrusive blocks which serve to destroy the character of one of the most treasured features of Oxford . . . These blocks need to be taken down by at least two storeys.”

I hope that all the parties now considering the matter will bear in mind the judge’s comment. I am not sure that bodies such as the city council and the Oxford Preservation Trust realise the enormity of what has been done.

It should be compared not with the Blavatnik building in Walton Street, or the proposed Westgate development but, rather with the road through Christ Church Meadow that nearly came to pass 50 years ago.

A. M. Hughes (Mr), Headington