Sir – In response to Professor Beer’s letter last week I would like to point out a number of facts. At the 2006 Master Plan ‘consultation’ most of Brookes’ new development was based on the Headington Hill site, in 2007 there was a radically changed addendum to the masterplan with the new development sited at Gipsy Lane.
However it wasn’t until the November 2008 ‘consultation’ that the sheer mass and height of the proposed new student building was revealed.
The ‘facts’ are that dimensions and elevations to the new building were not finally revealed until the planning application was submitted on April 1, 2009. The other ’fact’ was that the proposal has not changed in any way since 2007. So much for ‘consultation’.
Professor Beer has been invited to see the proposed new building from the gardens of our homes and the fact is she refused.
When I inadvertently called on Professor Beer’s home whilst obtaining signatures for our ‘Stop Brookes Now!’ petition I was told ‘it’s only a library’. The fact that there will be a nightclub, open-air cafes, bars and open air auditoria seems to have escaped her.
It is a fact that Pall Mall Consult (an independent communications consultancy) commissioned in September 2008 to work with Brookes on a pre-application consultation exercise, reveal in a collection of questionnaire responses, that there were 113 negative comments and only nine positive regarding the features of the new building. On a more optimistic note Professor Beer ends by saying ‘we are subject to the same planning rules as everybody else’. If that is true then their application will surely fail.
Colin Rosser, Headington Hill
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