THERE is frequent comment in your columns about the lack of and what defines affordable housing in Oxfordshire.

To answer the latter I have recently seen two communications.

One is from John Tutte, group chief executive of Redrow, the other from Diana Hasting, chairman of Wantage and Didcot Conservatives.

Both concern Redrow’s Asquith Park, in Sutton Courtenay.

John Tutte has stated that the homes being developed there are affordable. In this case, the cheapest currently being offered for sale is £480,000 and prices range up to £600,000-plus.

One of only two housing association two-bedroomed homes is £800pcm, so any of the several private buy-to-let properties at the site will be at least £1,000pcm.

Diana Hasting, when discussing Asquith Park in the Sutton Courtenay News, has stated that the village needs such high quality homes over a ‘wide range’ of prices.

So, if you were born in Sutton Courtenay and now want to set up your own home there, if you are not offered one of the two £800pcm housing association homes, you will still find it affordable, by their definition, so long as you have anywhere between £480,000 and £600,000.

There is a fly in this ointment, however. The median wage in the village is £25,000. This implies that Tutte and Hasting are either lexicographically challenged or are talking about Lala-land, not an Oxfordshire village.

PAULINE WILSON
Milton Road, Sutton Courtenay