I AM writing in response to the article about plans to build a five-storey hostel for 167 students at the junction of Latimer Road and London Road. The developer, Frontier Estates, said that this is the ‘right scheme in (the) right place’.

Certainly, this is just the right scheme for Brookes, coinciding neatly with closure of its Wheatley campus and the loss of an almost identical number of student rooms there.

It is possibly an ideal location for the proposed high-density, high rise but low-spec block designed to maximise profits for investors. However, I suggest that the right location for new student accommodation is on Brookes’ own land, possibly at the expanding Harcourt Hill site, where revenues would benefit the university itself.

For anyone who cares about the integrity of the Headington skyline or about a balance of accommodation this is the wrong scheme in the wrong place. Many locals consider, as I do, that the right scheme for this location would be a sensitively-designed low-rise development to address the desperate and much publicised shortage of key worker accommodation.

JAKE REA
Latimer Road, Headington