Sir – Andrew Pritchard (Letters, April 24) is right that ‘Greater Oxford’ has been creeping up on us for some time, though wanting to outsource the planning to an unelected quango, the Local Enterprise Partnership, would be disastrous.
Joined-up planning is highly desirable, but needs to be accountable. Unfortunately our local politicians rarely put housing and industrial growth proposals to the electorate.
Labour city council leader Bob Price is forever extolling the supposed benefits of expanding the city, last week going further by threatening that a Labour government would make Oxford a unitary council, abolish the county council and also steal Kidlington, Botley and land fringing Blackbird Leys from surrounding district councils (Report, April 24).
However, Mr Price puts none of this land-grabbing into his party’s manifesto, nor will you find anything about the Northern Gateway, building on Green Belt or other grandiose expansionary schemes in Labour election leaflets — only cosy chats about community supporting, low-cost housing in Barton and the wonders of the new Westgate.
Despite massive house-building within Oxford over recent decades (mostly unaffordable!), Oxford has retained its coherence as a small and pleasant city.
Talk of imitating Shanghai and Seattle by county Tory leader Ian Hudspeth shows that both local Tory and Labour parties have delusions of grandeur totally out of character with Oxford’s heritage.
Oxford has low unemployment; there’s no need to import loads of new jobs, sucking in yet more people to house. No one has asked us residents if we want this growth — so we need to challenge candidates about it on the doorstep.
Lib Dems (and UKIP) have been suspiciously quiet, only the Greens clearly oppose this kind of pointless growth. Well done CPRE for highlighting the dangers of ‘Greater Oxford’ — but where are the Oxford Preservation Trust, BBOWT and other community groups in all this?
Anthony Cheke, Oxford