Sir – One expects assaults on the Green Belt from ‘developers’ and empire-building politicians, but it’s astonishing to see Oxford Civic Society’s chairman joining in (Councils told to agree plan for expansion of city region, August 14).

There seems to be widespread failure to understand the very concept of the Green Belt, and this failure is demonstrated clearly when Mr Thompson says: “That [expansion plan] should be agreed by all the councils, as well as which parts of the Green Belt should be preserved”.

What is being misunderstood is the following: the whole point of the Green Belt is that all of it should be preserved, not merely those bits which particular commercial and political special interests deign to preserve ad hoc at a random point in time. As soon as those interest groups start tinkering and removing the bits that interfere with their expansion plans, the concept loses all meaning and vandalism ensues.

This is all the more so when the expansion plans are based on highly speculative and tendentious projections.

John Kinory, Steeple Aston