Sir – So, the long-awaited building of much-needed housing as part of Barton moves a step closer. The planning inspection has actually improved the scheme, getting rid of the commitment to reducing the ring-road to a snail’s pace — that was, as we have said before, a recipe not for integration but for traffic chaos. With that gone, so too the plan to force some of the new residents to live overlooking the ring-road — again, that was a recipe not for integration but for the opposite. There are still pitfalls on the way, including the hardly veiled threat from Ruskin’s planning agents to delay agreement over Barton if they don’t get their way and are allowed to build some houses on green fields in the conservation area.

What we need to be doing now is focusing on how we can make the new build at Barton as successful a community as possible — large enough to help tackle Oxford’s housing crisis but also well-designed to make it a workable community.

And let’s not stop there: let’s make it an exemplar of both design and environmental practice, with combined heat and power, with the facilities to make it a lively place and also one well connected by public transport to its local district centre of Headington. If we can, working together, make that happen, it will be no mean achievement.

David Rundle, City councillor (Lib Dem), Headington Ward, Oxford

Ruth Wilkinson, Lib Dem councillor for Headington