Sir – Some of us may still remember our county, just after the Second World War, and even after the addition of the old north Berkshire, when our Oxfordshire’s superb city, towns, very rural villages, countryside and glorious landscapes were tranquil, unique and special — somewhere quite different in character from adjoining shire counties, which naturally were splendid in various, different ways.


The 1947 Planning Acts had put a nationwide stop to endless indiscriminate ribbon housing development. Our own part of the country had suffered less than many areas and had remained extensively agricultural. People, however, were moving to live out of town and commuting.


Following the Acts, new planning applications were considered in the context of suitability and location, not just finance and land opportunity. Now, once again, we have a different perspective on housing need, based on providing for an ageing population, single households and also immigration. This time, it is considered urgent to provide more planning permissions to enable more development.


It is a tragedy that the Government seeks to lift all normal constraints to unwelcome and disfiguring development (probably resulting in no local Oxfordshire character, but just a slight modification on ‘house type no. 5’ for example in the standard book of house types!) by allowing anything to go almost anywhere, so long as the development was ‘sustainable’.

As almost anything fills this description, planning authorities are in an impossible position to give guidance on what is really suitable.


We must stop this latest ‘free for all’ by having a moratorium before everything goes terribly wrong and Oxfordshire, in its prime location at the crossroads of England and close to London, becomes Anywhereshire — a vast housing estate with no sense of place.


Brian Hook, Charney Bassett