When my children were much younger, they would ask me what I did for a living and I would try to explain with a story. The inevitable consequence was that my children concluded that my job was 'really boring'.

Of course, the best stories generally have a happy ending.They also tend to be short to keep the attention of the reader. But the story of new housing in Oxfordshire, by contrast, has had some twists and turns, with no real end in sight. The process has become an end in itself rather than a means to an end.

One of the inevitabilities about working in Oxford is that many young professionals have the difficult choice of either renting for the foreseeable future or buying a property outside the city and accepting the principle of a long commute. Prices in Oxford are now so high that they make that first rung on the property ladder out of reach for many young people, whether they be academic staff at the two Universities, public sector workers at the City or County Councils, NHS staff or planners in my team at Savills.

The need for more housing, particularly affordable housing, in Oxfordshire is accepted by many people, but there remains a significant number who don't want change and who will try to frustrate the provision of new housing at every opportunity.

The four district councils (Cherwell, South Oxfordshire, Vale of White Horse and West Oxfordshire), together with Oxford City Council and the County Council have been discussing how to provide more housing to meet Oxford's needs. The aim was to find a consensus on the scale of new housing across Oxfordshire which would provide a context for new local plans for each District. This exercise was plunged into uncertainty on 26 September when South Oxfordshire refused to accept the proposed housing numbers at a meeting of the Oxfordshire Growth Board. This now means there is uncertainty about the housing numbers for each authority and it also may mean that a Local Plan Inspector will now have to intervene in the difficult decision of deciding new housing numbers in South Oxfordshire.

The predictable result of this and delays at other local authorities is that fewer houses are being built in Oxfordshire than are required. This impact on supply while demand remains very high contributes to ever-increasing house prices. Those who already own their homes in Oxfordshire may be content with this situation.Their children and grandchildren who want to buy their first property will probably take a very different view.

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