Sir – What is it that is driving the city council’s manic drive for ‘growth’ overriding all else? Council leader Bob Price extols expansion in every editorial in the council’s freesheet, and now the Labour Party nationally (Report, December 19) is calling for a ‘right to grow’, overruling Green Belt policies and neighbouring district councils. Surely Oxford has already grown quite enough.
There has been a huge amount of housebuilding in the last 20 years (Greater Leys, Waterside, student blocks, infill everywhere), but this has had little effect on the chronic housing shortage, simply sucking in well-heeled incomers from elsewhere.
Why do we need a ‘Northern Gateway’ development for jobs? Oxford has relatively low unemployment and there is still space elsewhere — eg on the old car factory sites in Cowley.
The city Labour Party seems to be stuck in a 1960s mentality of growth being the answer to all problems, and can’t see that enough is enough. Oxford’s character is under serious threat. Most people in Oxford don’t want to live in expansionist places like Milton Keynes or Reading — if we did we would have moved there!
Anthony Cheke, Oxford
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