Sir – Ruskin College claims (Report, November 10) that its plan to build 150 new houses in a conservation area in Headington would ‘make a significant contribution to Oxford’s housing needs’.

It can do nothing of the sort unless the houses are sold or rented to Oxford residents well below market price, because the major cause of the Oxford housing problem is that so many local people cannot afford market values, nor anything near them.

The college has, in any case, a statutory obligation to make half of its scheme ‘affordable’ housing, with all the vagueness that term implies: it should make the entire stock genuinely affordable, available to all comers, with no reservation for students.

Otherwise it will simply add to the housing stock for students and the affluent middle-class.

Ruskin College is a registered charity and as such will have its business element of council tax discounted by no less than 80 per cent. The college was a great institution, founded with the noble aim of making the best in higher education available to the working class. It is sad that it has lost its moral compass.

Jane Jakeman, Sandhills, Oxford