OH GLORY! (‘Sold Down The River’: Oxford Mail, March 13).

Here we have it: the new Westgate’s Mill Stream House ‘luxury apartments’, across the stream from the City of Oxford College, many of whose students come from low-income households who struggle to find family accommodation (or any accommodation) in the city.

But Mill Stream House will be “alongside superb retail and leisure facilities and within close proximity to the rail station, so to live there would be incredible”. Incredible for whom? Clearly not for Oxford individuals and families who are at the mercy of private landlords and substandard health-threatening accommodation.

Could be, of course, that the 100 or so shops (almost all national chains, not local businesses), the 28 restaurants/coffee bars and a cinema will offer (insecurely contracted?) employment to less affluent Oxonians, and one must assume this was part of the dream Alex Hollingsworth shared with Ian Hudspeth some years back, standing in a car park in the rain.

That that car park could have been used to provide affordable housing wasn’t part of the two councillors’ shared dream, nor, one supposes, was the city centre overcrowding/congestion and air pollution ‘poisons’ which will come with the new Westgate as sure as swans will stop nesting along Castle Mill Stream. 

Future? What future?

BRUCE ROSS-SMITH 
Bowness Avenue
Headington
Oxford