Sir – It is refreshing to see some fresh thinking on strategic planning issues for the county reported on your pages (“Green Belt dismissed as a distraction”).

The “Green Belt” designation is not, as I understand it, one of landscape value designation but originated in post-war Britain as a concept of “green lungs” for urban sprawl. In our own era this protection perhaps needs to be revisited and balanced against development in areas with actual designated landscape value — AONBs etc.

Of prime importance in both landscape value and other, more commercial terms of tourist revenue for the county is the River Thames and its adjacent countryside.

In the late 1990s, strategic planning for the whole county lay in the hands of a team of expert planners at the county council who devised a vision for overall development bearing in mind the infrastructure available. This system was, however, subsequently revised by Government so that district councils became responsible for developments in their own smaller area. Whilst the objective to give more local accountability for choices made was laudable, it does seem to have resulted in a certain lack of new “joined up” vision and reliance on previous, possibly outdated county planning strategies — notably that dating from the 1990s of developing the larger “county towns” such as Didcot, Witney, Bicester etc.

Most of these towns are now beyond capacity with a groaning and totally inadequate infrastructure to support further development. Perhaps the time has come for a total revision of future development, based not on a commuting model, but on that of either one new town, or the development on the edges of Oxford for which the city has so long been asking.

Jane May, Long Wittenham