Sir – In response to Mr St John (Letters, March 6), the Strategic Housing Market Assessment recommendation is an extra 75,000 houses by 2029, including both the original target and the proposed top-up.


That equates to a worrying 20 per cent increase in the housing land take. He’s right, we haven’t yet experienced a 200mm event, despite suffering major flooding. Imagine the effect of a one-in-50 year rainfall on reduced green space.


In West Oxfordshire, the SHMA recommends about 12,000 homes — equivalent to another Witney and roughly a 30 per cent increase in the number of homes and population. Even during the last decade when immigration was unprecedented, UK growth was seven per cent.


With pledges to reduce immigration, can we realistically expect 30 per cent growth by 2029? If other counties weren’t getting any housing, it might make sense but practically everywhere has similarly high targets.


These targets are justified with emotional arguments on housing need. Left to itself, West Oxfordshire’s population would reduce.


Modest growth via in-migration is sensible but 30 per cent in a relatively short time-frame isn’t sustainable. House building was healthy here in the last decade, yet the affordable housing waiting list grew. Similarly, we particularly need housing for the elderly and recent strategic developments have provided very little of that.


Of course, it’s important to deal with genuine housing need but the main motivation for this house-building rampage is financial. While our infrastructure and services will be overstretched and developer funding probably won’t provide adequate mitigation, the big winners will be the developers and land agents, like Mr St John himself.


Their windfall may be short-lived though, should Bradley Stoke recur on a grand scale! Why then encourage a damaging boom-and- bust cycle, rather than steady growth?


And let’s not forget that the SHMA was written by property consultants.
 

Justine Garbutt, Alvescot