Whoever decided a report about mass job losses at Cowley was not worth following up needs to examine their public service ethic today.

It should be remembered that there is only one organisation which has put more than 1,200 workers out on the streets and that is BMW.

Oxford City Council could not stop that. Also it is not the sole organisation that should leap in to pick up the pieces of these broken careers and affected lives. That is the role firstly of central Government.

But the council is there to take care of its citizens and show leadership.

And at a time when other car manufacturers were collapsing, a report was prepared to consider what could be done to alleviate as much damage as was possible if a similar scenario was played out in Oxford.

Yet it was not followed up and, according to the council, was not passed up the chain of current command for further consideration.

We hope that decision wasn’t made with an arrogant outlook that our Mini plant would never again hit troubled times.

We know now it has.

This is not a case of hindsight giving 20/20 vision.

Preparations should have been made because boom times never last forever. The worst possible outcome could have been some wasted time setting contingencies in place but surely it would have been better to have something festering on a shelf than being caught unprepared.

The city council’s response yesterday was similarly lacking. It absolves the current management of any knowledge but does not explain why the decision to shelve this plan was made.