WE WANT Oxford City Council to do its utmost to upgrade its tower blocks simultaneously rather than one after the other.

There is a danger the council may decide to do each one separately for practical reasons but that would ignore the pressing human needs involved in this programme.

We must remember these are not just very large and, in some cases, crumbling buildings but people’s homes.

And as such people are having to put up with the condition they are in every day.

Tanya Rimes today speaks about the mould and damp in her flat and how she believes that contributes to the illnesses of her three children.

The fact the council is undertaking a £15m project to upgrade and update the towers is massively positive and it is a huge scheme.

However, it is now estimated that the whole project will not be completed until 2018 – that’s another five years away.

Working tower by tower means some residents could be forced to live another five years in increasingly deteriorating conditions.

We know that such a large scheme has to be planned and executed in a structured way.

But factoring in the human element and trying to devise the work scheme so that no residents are left until the bitter end would put the gold seal on a long overdue project that will really improve the lives of tenants.