Sir – It is interesting if you go round the streets of Headington and Marston sampling opinion about Brookes’s expansion plans in general and its proposed Gipsy Lane Headington horror show in particular.

Do the executives and planners care that they have alienated so much of Oxford over the past few years?

Must the big guys, however few in number, always be allowed to trample over the little guys?

Five conversations stand out: 1: The Brookes post-graduate Archaeology student who signed our petition of protest happily. She finds the new plans horrible and unnecessary (“an insult to Helena Kennedy”) and wonders why her department was not involved in any of the discussions. She says that Gipsy Lane is already a very noisy site, not good for serious studying, and this will become twice as bad with the plans for expansion.

2: The elderly couple in Gipsy Lane who were woken up at four in the morning by a drunken football match the organisers of which had closed off the road with traffic bollards. The thought of a night club on the new site fills them with dread. (“It's no use complaining.”) 3: The single mother from Grays Road who complains about the difficulties of bringing up her 14-year-old son with students regularly drunk outside her door and throwing beer cans into her garden. She knows that the new plans will worsen her pain. (“But what can you do?”) 4: The couple in Old Road who witnessed a drunken female student urinating in their garden at two in the morning (“We're going to get more of this. They can't cram more into Gipsy Lane.”).

5: The couple in the Hill Top Road area who have a newish Brookes students building near them. To get planning permission a promise was made that there would be no cars allowed. Was the promise kept? No prizes for the answer.

Sadly there is despair amongst most people that Brookes (like our banks up to the end of last year) can do whatever the heck they want and get away with it.

Ken Lovesy, Headington Hill