I am writing concerning house prices in North Oxford.
Wilfully or not, Charles Bidwell (April 4) has been selective in his reading of my letter. I wrote that: ‘If the present trend continues, North Oxford will become an exclusive ghetto for the mega rich’, not that it already is.
He suggests I come and look round for myself. I don’t need to. I live in North Oxford. Many of my neighbours, like his, are academics and professionals, who work hard and are pleased to bring up their families here. However, since we bought our house 25 years ago, prices have gone up by over 500 per cent so that I have made considerably more just from living in my house than from my work as a teacher. Lucky Jim, you may say but if prices continue to rise, it will be increasingly difficult for the next generation of academics, doctors and army officers to buy family houses here.
In the latest property section of The Oxford Times 10 houses were advertised in North Oxford and Summertown with an average price of £1,700,000 each.
A further problem is that at least 30 per cent of new developments are bought not as homes but as investments and there is a decreasing sense of community involvement.
I wrote my letter as a resident, concerned about the widening gap between different parts of Oxford. I mentioned the ‘mansion tax’ as a somewhat blunt instrument to redress this disparity. I also wrote that a more effective measure would be a reassessment of council tax bands, untouched since 1993.
Mr Bidwell assumes, correctly, that I am a Liberal Democrat. Liberal Democrats will continue to campaign, both in Oxford and nationally, to reduce the shameful inequalities in wealth, health and opportunity that exist in 2014.
JIM CAMPBELL
Liberal Democrat councillor St Margaret’s Ward
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