Your front page headline 'County Is Spaced Out' on September 2 quotes a Government report which appears to show that there will be a shortfall of over 47,000 houses if we develop all available brownfield sites.
But this report is fundamentally flawed: the shortfall is arrived at by using a density figure of 39 dwellings per hectare (the average for the South East).
The current figure for Oxford City, just published, is around 94 dwellings per hectare.
At this rate there would be a surplus of 26,000 houses!
We need to know the figures for the rest of Oxon so we can have a proper debate and challege the assumptions made by the so-called experts when it comes to how many houses we really need to build.
This report does not deal a blow to campaigners fighting to save the Green Belt as you claim in your editorial!
The real issue in the housing market in this area continues to be that prices bear no relationship to earnings and the market is being distorted by the massive growth in the buy to let market.
Lawrence Kelly Trinity Road Headington Quarry Oxford
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