IT WOULD no doubt be churlish not to wish Professor William James, Oxford University pro vice-chancellor for planning, and his colleagues well in their plans to oversee the building (by university and by colleges both) within Oxford’s boundaries of 2,000 employee/researcher dwellings plus a further 2,000 postgraduate accommodation.

Oxford Brookes proposes 2,500 more rooms over the next 10 years.

Cllr Alex Hollingsworth, city county council executive member for planning, is quoted as saying that “flexibility exists within the current policies”, then good, let it happen (‘University wants council to relax affordability on staff homes’, March 3).

It must, though, be stressed that whatever arrangements might be forged in Oxford between its universities and its council planners, these should not be used as precedents for colleges to make incursions into Oxford’s nearest dearest countryside.

As Professor James will know, Magdalen, St John’s, and Christ Church all have designs on land they own in Oxford’s Green Belt.

The largest of these is a 4,000 house Christ Church proposal in Oxford’s north eastern Green Belt, over land which 23 years ago, after a long and determined campaign from the residents of Forest Hill, Sandhills, Barton, Wick Farm, Elsfield, Woodeaton Headington, and Marston, with full support from Oxford City and South Oxford District Councils, was saved from a six-lane highway development.

Yes, a six-lane highway is not the same as 4,000 houses; if anything, the stresses (transport, ecological, and more) these homes, if ever built in total, would place on Oxford and its northern approaches would be worse. Nor is there any guarantee that such a development would help to resolve the city’s chronic dearth of affordable housing.

Local voices must be heard and reason prevail.

BRUCE ROSS-SMITH

Bowness Avenue, Headington, Oxford