Sir – Brookes has applied for planning permission for a new student centre on the western side of its Gipsy Lane site (No. 09/00695/FUL, public comments by May 1), a major departure from the original 2007 Masterplan which showed nothing on this monolithic scale.

The proposed six-storey development, almost three metres higher than Carfax Tower and the length of Kassam Stadium’s football pitch, is intended as an ‘iconic building’ at Oxford’s eastern gateway.

The impact on London Road environment and beyond is incalculable. As a ‘gateway’ it is on the wrong side of the campus. As an ‘icon’ it is of neutral architectural merit, neither daring nor visionary, merely big and boxy.

Visible from Hinksey, Boars Hill (Turner’s View) and Chilswell Valley, it will tower over the immediate vicinity. English Heritage has queried the disproportionate height.

The building would be in 24-hour use with late-night licensing, ambient light pollution and an increase in people, traffic, noise, litter. These are already serious blights in a cramped neighbourhood, which feels under siege as Brookes closes in on available building plots. As immediate neighbours, in a conservation area of 27 households, we are most radically affected, but we regard it as a bigger problem for the quality of life in Oxford. Our voice is small against the roar of this Goliath over our garden wall.

But we take hope from Brookes’ Chancellor, Shami Chakrabarti, director of Liberty, quoting Eleanor Roosevelt: “Human rights begin in your neighbourhood, with individuals, in small places, close to home, so small you cannot see them on a map”.

Once human in scale, an asset to the locality, Brookes has run out of control.

Dreaming of its new Valhalla on the hill, it has stopped listening, even to its brilliant new Chancellor. Shami, will you help defend our liberty?

Fiona Maddocks, Tom Phillips

On behalf of Headington Hill Residents’ Association