Sir, Among all the talk of community integration, or lack of it, in Britain today, Oxford Brookes University's self-declared takeover of Headington (Report, October 20) is a clear local example of why community separation happens.

The big institutions, whether universities, faiths or superpermarket chains, are blinded by their own exclusive ambitions.

There are people living in Headington. There is a city council with more to play for than Brookes. Has the new director at OBU noticed this, or just arrived with her "iconic" plan to mastermind a several steps leap up the university league table? What will be the long-term effect of student domination on Headington itself? It could destroy it.

For example, the Dorset House planning application rejected last week was extraordinarily arrogant. It proposed saturating a London Road site alongside social housing and medical premises with 400 student rooms within a stone's throw of three pubs and a 24-hour food and drink outlet. If you see Oxford city on weekend nights, including Magdalen roundabout and Headington Hill, you'll know the drunken and litter-strewn consequences. Yet it's odds on that the developer will try again. Individually, students are like everyone else. But in groups they are often very bad neighbours. I would like Brookes to think seriously about how its development plans will make them good neighbours.

The route is not going to be through incremental, ill-considered student buildings and conversions. The community needs consultation and reassurance.

We've had hundreds of years in central Oxford of "Town and Gown". We do not want to see a 21st-century equivalent of (university) Headington and (community) Deadington.

Ken Robertson, Headington