SO IT’S my fault is it? New Labour councillor, Ed Turner, claims (The Issue, October 19) that those who oppose the proposed Grenoble Road housing development “are making local families suffer.”

I’ve news for Ed. Local families are suffering because of New Labour’s refusal to replace the two million council homes flogged off or privatised by themselves and the Tories, despite a national waiting list of 1.75 million (up three-quarters of a million under New Labour).

Local families are suffering because too much land has been used to house university students rather than themselves. There’s too much Gown and not enough Town!

Giving Brookes university status was a disaster for Oxford. This city is too small to adequately house the students of two expansionist universities and the local population.

The Brookes intake has forced up rents in the private rented sector to obscene levels, making one New Labour-supporting landlord in particular very rich.

Councillor Turner’s solution is to expand Oxford even further east with 4,000 homes — none of them council ones.

Wrong place, wrong housing. Any new development should be on the vast tract of land between Harcourt Hill and Hinksey Hill. Much closer to town, this would minimise car use, journey time and congestion.

And it must be exclusively council to redress the private/public house building imbalance. Most people on the waiting list want council homes, not greatly inferior housing association landlords or private rabbit hutches.

Ed Turner knows this well enough. He knows that we need a million new council homes across the country. Why then even in the dog-end days of New Labour is he so fearful of using the “C” word?

JOHN GREEN, Risinghurst, Oxford