Sir — Which part of the term 'Green Belt' is so difficult to comprehend that Oxford's planning employees and elected councillors have so much difficulty with it?

The term is 'Green Belt', not 'Green Belt until such time that the planners find it inconvenient and decide to chop bits of it off and build all manner of things on it'.

The whole point of the Green Belt — which I would have thought is pretty self-explanatory — is that it puts a stop to urban sprawl, and prevents spineless (or empire-building) planners and self-interested 'developers' from turning a moderate-size town into a gigantic monstrosity.

And yet, here we have the aforementioned parties planning exactly such huge and monstrous sprawl in Barton and beyond Grenoble Road, seeking to grab land from neighbouring districts and expand Oxford into it — as though the concept of 'Green Belt' didn't exist. Moreover, there is the absurd plan for the misnamed 'eco-town' at Weston, not all that long after the M40 was diverted from decimating Otmoor. Should we start a collection and buy the planners a good dictionary, in which they could look up the meaning of terms such as green, belt, Green Belt and eco?

John Kinory, Steeple Aston