Sir – The article on the front page of The Oxford Times last week (Student cap could be cut to ease city housing crisis, August 17) drew attention to the Oxford Local Plan 2036 Preferred Options consultation.

Alex Hollingsworth [city council board member for planning] explained the preferred option being consulted on and the article gave the website address for the consultation.

Unfortunately, however Oxford City Council has made an error on its online comment form. You won’t find Option 20 (the student cap) on there at all. Instead Option 20 is about HMOs and Option 19 (which should be HMOs) is not there at all! Neither is Option 20 (the student cap) mentioned on the leaflet or the online questionnaire.

Confused? You should be! But one thing is sure – if you have commented online on the preferred options you won’t have commented on the student cap. Oxford City Council needs to be able demonstrate that they have allowed people the opportunity to make their views known. Given that the consultation ends on Friday it is hard to see how they can do this in respect of the student cap.

Even if they contact people who have already responded and advertise the omission they won’t be allowing sufficient time for a response, particularly because they have chosen to consult during the holiday season (again). I have therefore called on them to extend their consultation to ensure that they have a valid platform of responses on which to base the next stage of the process.

In my experience most people don’t even understand what a ‘preferred option’ is. Yet they are expected to wade through vast amounts of online material in order to respond meaningfully to this important consultation. It is disappointing that the might of the Oxford City Council planning department has hindered this legal process by allowing the above omission to occur.

Suzanne McIvor Talbot Road, Cutteslowe