Over two years ago the possibility of placing a wind turbine on sites owned by the city council, including Cutteslowe Park, was seriously considered and given publicity in the press and council papers.

Each turbine could provide renewable electricity for about 1,000 homes in the vicinity.

Any site would have to be sufficiently windy to be viable and planning permission would be required.

And best of all, there would be no cost to the city council.

As leader of the council at the time, I know that this project had widespread cross-party support.

So, why now is there this outburst of anger about this project?

It exemplifies the city council’s failure to inform, explain and listen to local people.

As a ward councillor for Wolvercote, I and, equally, the Friends of Cutteslowe Park, have a legitimate expectation that we will be kept informed and be consulted on the when and where of the proposal.

But, no, an obscurely placed small print notice in the local press announced, in legal jargon, that some four hectares of the park was to be “disposed of”.

Outrage naturally follows.

On inquiry, it appears that a turbine would occupy 0.07 hectares of the park space – about one sixtieth of the space quoted in the legal notice.

This larger area is simply to give scope to find the best small site within this larger area. If the council’s intentions had been explained to local people in comprehensible lay language, goodwill towards a valuable environmental project would not have been endangered.

I hope that the present city council administration will learn from such unhappy and avoidable incidents and start to practise the openness that is essential if trust and confidence in public administration is to be rebuilt.

John Goddard, Oxford city councillor, Wolvercote Ward, Blandford Avenue, Oxford