The enthusiasm of town planners for squeezing blocks of flats into unsuitable spaces is getting out of hand.

The planners seem to be welcoming anyone who can make more efficient use of land, and so help councils win brownie points from our benighted Government.

As a result, the so-called public consultation part of the planning process is now a farce.

Take a recent case nodded through by Cherwell District Council. The application was for permission to demolish two detached bungalows at the corner of High Street and Exeter Road, Kidlington, and replace them with eight flats, two large car ports and a total of 14 car parking spaces – all behind a kitsch mock Victorian façade.

Documents on the council’s website show how planners agreed the scheme in principle before going public, despite reservations raised by their own design and conservation officer.

They also disregarded established building lines and highway boundary, and rejected all 13 objections from local residents (including myself) claiming that all the issues raised – such as it being overdevelopment, excessively prominent, too close to neighbours, overlooking listed buildings, having a design bearing no resemblance to the surrounding area, and posing noise and flood risks – were not sufficiently harmful to warrant refusal.

Among the objectors was an elderly couple living next door.

They built their bungalow themselves, and, like several of their neighbours, had paid towards the original making up of the road.

Their reward for such admirable self-sufficiency is to have one large carport built along the side of their front garden, a similar one built by their bedroom and rear garden and to suffer what even the council concedes as “some disturbance” from cars shunting into parking spaces that their own officer says are too tight.

Even this mess is deemed not severe enough to warrant refusal.

Far from it, the planners say it complies with government guidelines on “making places better for people”!

Jeff Lyes, Kidlington