Sir – Your readers may wish to know of an important new step towards conserving our city’s unique character.

In a landmark decision on December 3, the Oxford City Council’s Oxford North Area Committee (ONAC) refused consent for development on the north corner of Lathbury and Woodstock Roads.

The site, one of the steadily diminishing number of corner-sites of the North Oxford Victorian Suburb Conservation Area (NOVSCA), contains a house, “Elmswood”, by a notable architect of the early 20th century, set in a garden which in effect constitutes part of the house, so intimately is it related to it.

The house, with its leafy surrounding garden, contributes significantly to the character of the conservation area — known to town-planners throughout the world — and so to that of our city as a whole. Another of the few remaining NOVSCA corner-sites has been saved, at least for now, by Oxford City councillors’ wisdom.

ONAC is to be congratulated on preferring Oxford`’s long-term conservation good to the quick profit of development within this conservation area.

Especially in these difficult times for local government, it was a brave and a wise decision and it is one for which my wife and I, long-time residents and lovers of Oxford, as well as objectors to the proposed development, are grateful to our city council and its ONAC.

R.E.M. Lawson, Oxford