CHAKA Artwell (‘Affordable housing U-turn is a betrayal,’ Letters, July 24) has it right: Oxford City Council, along with Oxfordshire’s other district councils and the County Council, are shamefully developer-led, hell-bent on allowing every proper developer under the sun to maximise their profits in the name of growth.

That the city council in its Local Plan also proposes to set aside “employment land” when what Oxford needs is not new employers but secure contracts and pay for Oxford’s existing lower and lowest paid employees. Councillor Bob Prices seems to be saying that we need to line up new carts to attract horses from outside Oxford, when we already have enough horses in town but enough stables. By the Council’s own figures, a third of Oxford’s families live below the poverty line (less than £15,000 pa for a single parent with two children, £21,000 for a couple with two children), not because these families lack employment but because of deficit earnings, restricted benefits, and exorbitant housing costs. 

What is the vision which guides Councillors Price and Hollingsworth other than placing avaricious property developers in the ascendant? Nothing good can come from this surrender to the very worst excesses of so-called market forces based on a model for growth which will lead to the extinction of us all

BRUCE ROSS-SMITH 
Bowness Avenue
Headington