Sir – In response to Peter Jay, West Oxfordshire District Council (WODC) faces a difficult situation. Cherwell set a target below the Strategic Housing Market Assessment, which the inspector immediately rejected.

WODC is still proceeding with a lower target than the SHMA recommendation, but officers must be concerned that if their target is too low, they will suffer Cherwell’s fate.

Even worse, any delay will lead to further speculative planning applications. Whilst the SHMA is key evidence, it’s not absolute. The authors are property development consultants and their assessment multiplies a number of upper limit assumptions to derive the largest possible housing target.

Mid-year estimates are already lagging behind SHMA predictions and there is a risk that supply could exceed demand, leading to another painful market collapse.

Someone should stand back and consider the consequences of building 40 per cent more houses in Oxfordshire than built in total to this day.

The UK is experiencing a knee-jerk reaction to a recent spike in population growth, due to unprecedented immigration. A sensible balance will no doubt be restored in the fullness of time, but in the meantime we must avoid doing irrevocable damage.

It’s unrealistic for beautiful places to completely avoid development and we mustn’t think we can run amok in less beautiful places either.

However, I agree that there are brownfield sites in the UK where development would create betterment and be more appropriate. These sites must be prioritised.

Certainly, natural change in West Oxfordshire is very low, with growth fuelled by demand and not need. Therefore, we should be able to decide through Localism, how much growth is appropriate.

I still believe that there is justification for reducing the target further, but the Local Plan process should not be delayed. Therefore, the target should be a maximum figure, for future downwards review, when common sense prevails.

Justine Garbutt, Alvescot