Sir – Oxford Brookes University, my employer and therefore the reason why my family has moved to Headington, needs to develop and improve its estate.

There has been very little development of the Headington campus in the last 20 years, and it shows in the state of the buildings.

It also shows in the inadequacy of the buildings to meet the needs of students who are studying in new ways, and staff whose research is world class.

Ken Lovesy, (Letter, May 21) tells us that Brookes thinks it can do whatever it wants, but this just isn’t true.

Brookes is bound by tough planning restrictions, ones that actually force it to concentrate development on the urban-scale Gipsy Lane site.

This development isn’t about growth; the university is planning to reduce the amount of space it uses for sound sustainability reasons, but we have to build first, before we can refurbish and demolish.

When my family came to Headington, we swapped living near the student housing in another city that also had two universities, and I can confirm that there’s much more active management of students in the communities that they live in here in Oxford.

Students are adults who might drink too much sometimes (but less than they used to) and own too many cars (far more than they used to) but when living outside halls that’s really challenging to regulate.

I know that it only takes a few incidents to colour residents’ perceptions against the university and its students, but we, and our residents’ associations, should take into account the huge benefits that having a successful university brings to our neighbourhood, rather than seeing it as a pesky interloper.

Mike Ratcliffe Headington