Sir – Your readers will recall that an effort is being made by a group of Oxford residents (and council taxpayers) to have Oxpens Meadow registered as a town green — so that no further building or development can take place there.

Those who know the meadow — or even just drive past it — will know what a welcome area of green (lined with trees and with the banks of the River Thames and Castle Mill Stream around it) the meadow forms, in the heart of a rather run-down and neglected area — the so-called West End.

The only opponents to the scheme are the city council planning department which wishes to defend its right to build on a segment of the Meadow — probably about a third of it at least. The application for a town green is to go to an enquiry soon and it seems that the city council is able and willing to spend a considerable sum of council taxpayers’ money on an eminent QC to oppose the plan for town green status.

No attempt seems yet to have been made by city councillors to restrain their own planning officers. That Oxpens Meadow — beautiful, open day and night (no fences and barred gates here) the only piece of publicly-owned parkland in central Oxford — should be despoiled in this way seems outrageous. Do other Oxford citizens agree?

Mary Hodges, Oxford