MUCH as I welcome the redevelopment of the Westgate Centre, it seems inexplicable that the city council should make an exception to its own policy of insisting on affordable housing as part of all new developments, allowing instead luxury flats.

This follows it making an exception for Oxford University’s Blavatnik building, which breaches its policy of not allowing buildings to be taller than Carfax Tower.

Meanwhile, the city council will soon to be asked to accept Oxford University’s argument that the Castle Mill accommodation blocks, which an Environmental Impact Assessment has shown to have caused immense damage to our city’s environment and heritage, is an “exceptional case”, justifying that damage on grounds of “public benefit”, for the sake of one extra storey and a few dozen rooms. Exceptions to the rules, in direct contradiction to each other?

Now we learn that Network Rail, who sold the plot of land that used to be railway sidings to the university for them to build those accommodation blocks blighting Port Meadow, is cutting down (or “de-vegetating”, as they call it) 33,000 square metres of woodland between the Castle Mill blocks and William Lucy Way, in order to build... railway sidings. You couldn’t make it up.

Karin Eldredge
Salisbury Crescent
Oxford

Today’s letters


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