HELEN Marshall, director of the Oxfordshire Campaign to Protect Rural England, is a successor to members of Oxfordshire CPRE who pressed for the creation in 1956 of Oxford’s Green Belt and is always powerful in her defence of that Green Belt (The Issue, April 9).

What, however, she seems to lack, is any compassion for those in Oxford and Oxfordshire who live in overcrowded, substandard but overpriced, accommodation. Perhaps Helen Marshall is a lone parent with four children living in a poorly-maintained and far-too-small dwelling, and therefore knows what such a situation is like. Or perhaps she’s like me and my family, who are fortunate to live in a good house in a very pleasant location and who can’t begin to appreciate the pressures many Oxford and Oxfordshire individuals and families are under when it comes to housing conditions and costs in the most expensive housing area in the United Kingdom.

Without people, there wouldn’t be a Green Belt, but the Green Belt isn’t more important than people.

A bit of compassion would go a long way and it can’t be the case, at least not from a cosmopolitan perspective, that Helen Marshall and her CPRE colleagues view themselves as being morally privileged.

Protection of rural England is important; humane co-operation even more important. My apologies for preaching.

Bruce Ross-Smith

Bowness Avenue

Headington