Sir - So Castlemore (through Spring Residential) is now appealing the Jericho Boatyard planning refusal.

This is only a "high stakes" poker game for them. There's far too much potential profit still on the table to not see another card. The appeal process is somewhat vague but certainly it will be conducted from the Planning Inspectorate in Bristol. (coincidentally, built by Castlemore some years ago).

We, as citizenry, must by some means regain control of the planning process. The Castle Mill Boatyard represents a marvellous opportunity for urban residential planning to come up with a project that addresses all the needs, but that can never happen as long as profit is the bottom line for the developer (Actually profit is not the bottom line.... it's the only line).

Until some worthwhile authority is able to incorporate imagination with community and cultural integrity and get those values installed into the planning process, the so-called "development" we see today, along the canal and other places will continue. We all know how important the tourist is to Oxford, and the entire world spends vast sums here. It's perhaps a shock to realise that practically none of the architecture they come to see has been built in the last 100 years. In fact, what has been recently built continues to put them off.

So bring on the appeal. Jericho has survived numerous community killing blows, and we'll be damned if we don't see the back of this lot of arrogant interlopers as well. Jericho is not fighting for profit, just our very survival as a living breathing community. To paraphrase John Paul Jones, one of my long ago countrymen, "We have not yet begun to fight"!

Emmett Schlueter, Jericho