Sir – The current planning application for housing, for 316 students, on the Dorset House site, Headington, should be rejected. It proposes a conglomerate of buildings that would utterly overdevelop this site lying in a domestic neighbourhood of houses and flats.

Documentation submitted with the application reveals that Brookes University is involved with Berkeley Homes, the developer. To look at the scheme, one might think an iceberg-sized chunk of Brookes campus had broken free and drifted east irrevocably to rupture the domestic scale of the area. Consultation meetings with Headington representatives discussed details of the scheme, but the bigger picture — the gross bulk of the proposal — did not feature. Or was deftly steered away from.

Laudably, the developer’s architects have tried their best, scaling down the building elements at the front and edges of the site so that these would rise no higher than the rooftops of the adjoining houses at 60/62 London Rd, or of Horwood Close opposite.

The bulk of the scheme, however, at four storeys, would out-top all around by a not inconsiderable 9-10 feet.

This is gross, clearly driven by finance: the more student rooms crammed on to the site, the greater the potential income.

A full on-site occupancy of 316 students (at, say, £6,000 a head) would net Brookes an annual fee-revenue approaching £2m; easy, also, to suppose that Berkeley Homes (or their eventual agent) might reap a very substantial room-rental income. Big money!

The thought arises: might not both institutions still handsomely manage with less? Drastic, but technically simple, slice away the whole of the obtruding third floor. Fee-revenue to Brookes would perhaps drop to £1.3m, but would surely still be very acceptable; Berkeley Homes would surely manage somehow.

Headington could stand to benefit.

John Barrow, Headington