It is a year since Oxford University promised in the High Court that it would carry out a retrospective Environmental Impact Assessment on the effect of its inappropriate and over-sized development that has ruined Port Meadow.

This piece of work was originally expected by Easter, then by the summer, then after the summer, and yet we are still waiting.

We have now been told it will be out “in the next few weeks”, but the university continues to be coy about precisely when.

Since there is then an automatic six week consultation period, if the assessment is made available any later than the end of October, the whole process will roll into the Christmas holiday period when many people who might wish to express their views may well be away or otherwise distracted. (Your readers may remember that the highly critical Goodstadt Review into the city’s handling of this planning fiasco was released over the Christmas holiday last year, in what was widely seen as an attempt to bury its findings that the council’s procedures and community consultation were woefully inadequate, and that the University appeared to misrepresent certain facts on its planning application.)

Today’s letters

Had an Environmental Impact Assessment been carried out in the usual way before planning permission was granted for the flats, this development would never have happened in the way it has.

As it is we are left in the bizarre situation of awaiting an assessment on an impact that is already there for all to see.

What we most need to know is what is being proposed to put things right.

Nicky Moeran, On behalf of the Save Port Meadow Campaign

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