IN SEPTEMBER 1994, as part of of its Programme of work on Income and Wealth, published ‘Changing Patterns of Income and Wealth in Oxford and Oldham, based on search by by a team from Oxford University’s Department of Applied Social Studies and Social Research. To the surprise of people here in Oxford, the study revealed that Oxford and Oldham in 1994 had very similar ‘poverty profiles’, for this similarity, a former mill town contrasted with an affluent varsity city, seemed counter-intuitive. In Oxford in 1994 one in four children lived in families dependent on Income Support to one in five in Oldham.

Now, 32 years later, we learn that Oxford is "labelled as a ‘coldspot’ for social mobility” (‘Great Divide Grows Wider’, Oxford Mail, February 2). Oxford City Council figures have it that at least 27 per cent of the city’s children live in poverty based on household income, which almost certainly underestimates actual levels of material and emotional poverty.

By all measurements Oxford is a barren landscape for far too many of its residents, from young to old, more in need than ever of children’s centres, youth provision, social care for the elderly, which have either already withered or soon will, with Oxfordshire County Council having abdicated from its social contract with the people it purports to represent, both in Oxford and in the rest of Oxfordshire.

So what future for this city of great wealth and of dire poverty? As for our schools, teachers in what can still just about be called the state sector can’t afford to live in Oxford; and the poorest of families subsist below a harsh and bitter poverty line.

What today would a study of Oxford and Oldham bring to the fore?

Bruce Ross-Smith

Bowness Avenue

Headington

Oxford