Sir – Ms Garbutt’s letter (February 27) speculates about the number of new dwellings the Strategic Housing Market Assessment may call for — by the time you print this letter — if indeed you choose to — the figures may well be out in the public arena, from what I hear.


The Vale of White Horse District Council seem to have been told months ago about what they may have to do — as they produced a revised and pretty comprehensive new draft local plan on February 21 — about 60 pages long — and proposing over 7,000 extra new homes to 2031, on various sites round their district. Incidentally, if Ms Garbutt’s speculation of 37,500 extra homes county-wide proves to be the case that could still be accommodated on less than one per cent of the county of Oxfordshire, which is probably still around 90 per cent rural.


So with the nation’s population expanding as it is, thanks directly to 13 years of Labour’s open-door policy on net inward migration, would it be a disaster if say 11 per cent of the county was urban as opposed to 10 per cent — probably not.


The Oxfordshire Local Enterprise Partnership is anticipating upwards of 50,000 new jobs in the county over the next few years — where are all these people going to live? In 2007’s big storm/flood event (seen  now as a 100-year storm) we had about 100mm to 125mm in about 24 hours after a wet month — but can she tell us when did we last get 200mm in a day in Oxfordshire? That’s eight inches in old money.
 

Harry St John, North Leigh