To build 5,000 homes is a welcome and worthwhile idea, but in one place at the same time?

I bet policing the proposed Weston Otmoor will be a great laugh for our already overstretched local force?

Would local communities across the county not be better served by having say 15-20 homes built in 250-300 smaller towns and villages to bolster their own existence?

Homes could be made available to local families for rent or purchase at an affordable price, keeping the age-old traditions and the lifeblood of smaller communities very much to the fore.

As long as those areas and their infrastructures are able to cope, the 'shock' of a smaller scale development would be more manageable.

Councils, by ignoring the need for smaller, evenly spread and manageable local development and housing, will probably be missing a good chance of helping to develop smaller business and trade opportunities countywide.

Local markets and traders need an opportunity to compete locally, offering much more of the wonderful range of locally produced, no-air-miles-at-all foodstuffs and goods that are available, to a bigger customer base.

Sticking 5,000 homes in one area at the same time, with a few shops and a pub, is pure folly.

The knock-on effects have clearly not been thought out thoroughly and thoughtfully.

To build superstores like the Westgate, in a place that will encourage even more traffic into an already congested city, is pure stupidity.

Putting unnecessary pressure on an area of the county countryside already at bursting point, such as M40 Junction 9, is total madness and probably an irreversible act of ecological vandalism.

How many homes could you get into the University Parks, Christ Church Meadow or Blenheim Palace, I wonder? And pigs will fly . . .

I know no-one in the Weston-on-the-Green or Otmoor areas. I was born in Headington, but I sympathise with the problem they now have - through no fault of their own - and hope their clearly justified protest and defence of their lifestyle ends in victory for both them and common sense.

Good luck to them!

DAVID WILLIAMS, David Walter Close, Oxford