OXFORD City Council leader Bob Price, in commenting on the possible revision down from 100,000 new homes to 68,000 new homes to be built in Oxfordshire over the next 20 years (‘We Don’t Need 100,000 Homes’: September 18) says the revised figures “don’t as yet reflect the reality of economic growth.” 

Well yes, that might always be said, but what Mr Price and his Town Hall colleagues, with booming echoes from County Hall, are advocating is based on presumptions of growth untempered by any assumptions of constraint and consolidation. 

Historic parallels are often misleading, but it might be recalled that: “As early as 1946 the city council had come to an agreement with the major industrial firms, Morris and Pressed Steel, that further growth of employment in Oxford would, as far as possible, be prevented, and the Green Belt was consistent with this policy of containment” ( D.I. Scargill: Urbanization of Oxford’s Green Belt, 1975). 

As it happens this agreement didn’t curtail the growth of Oxford’s car-manufacturing base but until the arrival of Margaret Thatcher the city council was able to provide sufficient council housing to meet that growth.

Of course, Oxford City Council should be able to build more real social housing (beyond the 354 at Barton Park) but central government will continue to block this essential need.

It might seem insensitive to suggest that Oxfordshire’s councils must think long and hard about what Councillor Price means by “the reality of economic growth” and how this reality will fail to serve people at a local level. 

Growth, yes, but constraint and consolidation shouldn’t be thrown out with developers’ dirty bathwater.

BRUCE ROSS-SMITH 
Bowness Avenue, Headington