Sir – Mark Barrington-Ward, in commenting on the Barton Area Action Plan, is of course right to say (Letters, June 30) that it would “be better to continue building behind hedges and trees”; and health risks from living cheek-by-jowl with major roads, in particular for children, are beyond dispute.

Mr Barrington-Ward also reflects that new homes in Oxford are much-needed, and herein lies the dilemma: large post-war housing conurbations have frequently been socially bleak and smaller settlements work better as neighbourhoods, and yet Sir Michael Sadler, who retired from the Mastership of University College to the Rookery (now Ruskin Hall), Old Headington, in 1934, saw the northern bypass built at the bottom of his land in 1935, initially a relatively modest road, whose construction was part of a local work-creation programme at the height of the depression.

Sadler wrote movingly about Oxford in its green setting, probably at its very best in his northern outlook from The Rookery towards Elsfield and Beckley; and Dr Ian Scargill has been and is a powerful advocate for the essential need for the Green Belt to be protected. And yet Oxford’s housing crisis (a glib word which disguises real anguish for those who can’t find secure housing in a city of absurdly high housing costs) won’t go away and is likely to worsen.

The harsh reality is there may not be a solution to Oxford’s housing problems, whether a projectile south of Greater Leys or the current proposals for west of Barton and the possible South Oxfordshire District Council development at Bayswater Farm.

The arguments against building in the Green Belt are persuasive; the arguments for providing at least 40 per cent of affordable housing in developments in and around Oxford are persuasive. The wisdom of Solomon comes to mind.

Bruce Ross-Smith, Headington