You report proposals to use parts of Southfield golf course in East Oxford for housing (Oxford Mail, March 23).

The tenor of your leader is critical, asking, among other things, why college sports grounds are not being considered for housing. I speak as a member of a centuries-old Oxford family, with no university or political party connections Part of the golf course, I understand, is already owned by the city. To use this land would be far less costly than having to buy college sports grounds.

The density of player usage of a golf course is far lower than for any sports ground.

To remove sports grounds from the city would encourage motor vehicle transport among students who, at present, use bicycles.

This country, as a whole, has more golf courses than can be sustained by membership. This is the case locally.

Southfield Golf Club members have a choice of local clubs to move to. To move will be a wrench, but they will soon settle.

However, I do not agree with the apparent large size of the proposed area of building.

Oxford, east of Magdalen Bridge, needs another 'lung' between Florence Park and Bury Knowle Park for the use of the wider public. The golf course site would be ideal, perhaps as a wild or natural area.

A linking issue is the development of the Headington hospital strategy, which will increasingly put strains on an already overstrained road system.

Hollow Way demonstrates this already and it is grossly detrimental to the local population.

This is a heaven-sent opportunity for a road to be constructed between Iffley Road and the Churchill Hospital using, in part, the line of the Boundary Brook from Iffley Road as far as the council depot at Marsh Road, across Cowley Marsh, over the scrubland on the south west side of the golf course, across a short part of the golf course to the Churchill Hospital and Warneford Road.

The Greens will automatically and robotically shriek "no" to another road, but it will be a more 'green' option than the present strangled road system.

The route of such a road would affect very few people and ease a burden for many more.

One of the pressure points on housing in Oxford is the high student density - roughly 30,000 incoming students of all types on a native fixed population of about 120,000 citizens.

With hindsight, the college, which became Brookes University, should never have been founded by the city fathers.

However, we must accept our student numbers and they must be accommodated.

We should require the two universities to house their own students. For this purpose. Brookes could use the golf course site off The Slade, opposite the old barracks.

If we do not resolve the problems of housing and mobility, life in Oxford will become very unpleasant.

Public transport will remain part of the problem, not of the solution until we have an integrated sole provider of buses.

David Manners, Belvedere Road, Oxford