Sir – As a heritage professional and part-time tutor in the University’s Continuing Education Department, I and others have been teaching joined-up approaches to heritage and landscape management for decades. In the context of the recent vote in Congregation much has been made of ‘lessons learnt’. But what is the substance?

The University trades on the dreaming spires at every turn, but despite the Port Meadow flats saga, its ‘Environmental Sustainability Policy’ still does not formally recognise heritage and landscape conservation as part of its 10 ‘key areas’. Yet national policy includes these as a major element of ‘sustainable development’ and says they are considerations to which ‘great weight’ must be applied in the planning balance. Instead, despite some very good conservation plans for its own buildings, the University’s internal guidance still sees heritage as a time-consuming constraint. 

A few days before the vote in Congregation, the Vice Chancellor stated that ‘No university, not even one as beautiful as Oxford, should put buildings before its students’.

By formally sidelining heritage and landscape as being outside its concept of sustainability, while simultaneously marketing itself on the very heritage values that have been so damaged by the flats, the University still has not grasped what it will take to practise what it teaches.

It is time the University took off the rose-tinted spectacles about lessons learnt, and began a root-and-branch review of its whole concept of sustainability, looking beyond its own estate to develop an innovative fully joined-up and more transparent approach.

It should honour the wonderful environment that it rightly trades on through an overarching philosophy of conservation-led design to enhance rather than sideline what contributes so much to its own working environment.  Very few universities in the world can boast an environment ‘as beautiful as Oxford’.

George Lambrick, Boars Hill