Sir – While Janet Beer was posing against the neatly manicured lawns of Headington Hill Hall and extolling the benefits which Brookes University brings to Oxford (Report, March 4), Brookes’s other contributions to the community were surfacing below.

A report elsewhere in the same issue described how Headington Hill Park had been polluted by excrement escaping from a blocked sewage pipe leading from Brookes’s adjacent site, causing a health hazard and leading to the park being closed for a week, depriving residents and dog-walkers of a much-needed recreational facility.

How neatly does that encapsulate the relationship between Brookes and those who have the misfortune to live in the shadow of its expanding campus and halls!

John Small, New Marston