The Environmental Assessment on the Port Meadow flats confirms what everyone has been telling Oxford City Council and Oxford University for months: five-storey blocks of flats on that site have had a hugely damaging effect on a number of priceless historic views of our beautiful city.

Consultants now propose three possible courses of action to try to reduce the harm, ranging from planting some extra vegetation and cladding the flats’ walls (the cheapest option) to Option 3 – lowering the height of the flats – which would obviously be more costly.

Not surprisingly we are told that the university favours the cheapest option.

But the problem with this is that the consultants admit this would only slightly reduce the impact of the flats. On the other hand they say reducing their height would substantially reduce their impact. So, unpalatable though it may be, that can be the only option, surely?

Catherine Odell, The Close, Stadhampton

Today’s letters

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