DERRICK Holt’s most recent letter about Barton and the A40 (Oxford Mail ViewPoints, July 9) trivialises Oxford’s acute housing shortages.


Oxford City Council is not seeking to build new homes to meet the needs of London commuters but rather to tackle the pressing needs of the many individuals and families who cannot achieve any kind of secure and lasting home in a city where house prices persist in being destructively high.
London (and other) commuters do indeed buy up homes in Oxford, as they’re quite entitled to do; such purchases, however, play a significant part in driving up prices for even the most modest dwellings.
 

As for Barton “being in the wrong place”, this is silly and unhelpful.
Barton is where it is and people living in Barton have for decades been working together to make their neighbourhood a good place in which to live, which in my and my family’s experience was certainly the case when we lived on Barton in the 1990s (we moved to Headington to accommodate our growing family).


As for noise pollution, it is not, as Mr Holt suggests I said, merely “irritating”; like light pollution from major roads and road systems, persistent excessive traffic noise is, as the World Health Organisation has stated many times, a very real health hazard, not least to children's cognitive development.
Affordable ‘good’ housing in a healthy communal environment is what we should all wish and hope for, for ourselves and for all our fellow Oxonians.

 


BRUCE ROSS-SMITH,
Bowness Avenue,
Headington