Sir, South Oxfordshire District Council is running a consultation about where the new housing the Government is forcing us to take should be built.

The main choices it offers are between all in towns including a substantial increase in the size of Thame or towns and villages which would see considerable expansion of smaller rural settlements like Chalgrove on to the fields which surround them. Ominously, however, it also contains a number of sites across the district proposed by developers, including a massive increase in the size of Green Belt villages like Horspath and perhaps most concerning of all the re-emergence of Stone Bassett, a huge new town beside the M40 at Great Milton and Tetsworth.

In these days of consultations and (apparent) democracy, these soundings by SODC are not dry-as-dust affairs - the results will be public, and will influence whether your countryside is concreted over or not.

Please join us at CPRE in letting SODC know how you feel about that.

The consultation is disarmingly called Site Allocations and is on the council's website at www.southoxon.gov.uk; or you can call the council on 01491 823725 and ask for a copy. It ends on November 17.

It goes without saying that those who have an interest in destroying the countryside will be busy sharpening pencils right now - make your views known so that it is very clear what the majority of us think.

Michael Tyce, Campaign to Protect Rural England, Waterstock