Annoying response to green belt fears

RE: ‘Green belt protesters in challenge to council over homes’ (Apr 30) – your article gives a consistent council response.

If asked why the Local Plan numbers are wildly inaccurate, or any other indefensible comment, there is generally no logical answer but an annoying standard response that “the numbers are robust and justified”. Not that they are wrong, but that they are certainly very robust and indeed highly inflated, and the justified part relates to justifying the developers’ demands to build on prime green belt land with houses in the £500,000 to £600,000 range.

These are well outside the range of the first-time buyers that Coventry City Council claim to try and satisfy.

These developments do however satisfy the needs to maximise the developers profits. Coventry City Council officers conversely have failed miserably to represent the residents and to curb the ambitions of these developers.

Coventry also says that they have to use the government-generated Office for National Statistic (ONS) figures. They conveniently forget that the ONS say that these are projections and a starting point only. The ONS state that local councils should use their local knowledge to adjust these figures. In Coventry’s case, the council produces an Annual Monitoring Report (AMR) that shows that for the first six years of this plan, house build figures have averaged 986/ annum. So why do they persist in maintaining bizarre plans based on 2,120/ annum?

The answer is obvious to me, in that without this “stupid number” (John Mutton’s description), there is no need to release green belt and the developers would be very annoyed. It would seem that the function of the planning officers is not to upset the developers, but to certainly disregard any complaints from residents who they are meant to represent. Clive Birch Tile Hill

Law of unintended consequences

MR Alders (Letters, Apr 30) is very fortunate to know all of the answers to all of the questions raised by the EU referendum vote.

There is a lot still to do to extract 40 years of shared sovereignty and turn it into a set of laws and regulation for the newly liberated United Kingdom.

Take the Irish border issue, which most people hoped had gone away thanks to the Good Friday Agreement, but has become a live topic once more. Some of the finest brains are therefore now looking for a solution which: ■■Allows customs dues and other taxes to be collected accurately and efficiently ■■Allows free movement of people and goods in both directions ■■Deals effectively with criminal activities ■■Allows road, rail and air traffic within Ireland to function effectively ■■Ensures that Northern Ireland remains part of the United Kingdom ■■Does not relocate the border to the middle of the Irish Sea.

I suggest that many who put their crosses in the Leave box do not in fact understand the Law of Unintended Consequences, whereby things that look simple on the surface turn into the proverbial can of worms when opened.

There are more productive ways for government to spend my taxes, instead of the thousands of extra civil servants being recruited to implement this nonsense. Mervyn Leah Rugby

Handy guide in my hand, not on screen

I HAVE just read your article by Katy Hallam with information about the local election (‘Third of the council is fighting for YOUR vote’, Apr 30).

I quote: “We’ve compiled a handy guide with everything you need to know about the upcoming election”.

As I read further into the article there was no ‘handy guide’ to be found.

At the bottom of her piece it advises me I can find these details if I go to www... I buy the Coventry Telegraph to get local news, if I wanted to use the internet I would not waste 75p buying a Telegraph. Joan Horseman Keresley

Disabled loo made less accessible

THE disabled toilets in Pool Meadow, which the disabled of Coventry use with the keys they purchased for that use, are now no longer of use to them, since the people responsible for them have put coded locks on them.

So now if you need to use the toilets, you have to go looking for a person to open it with his or her code.

As you will appreciate, that is not very convenient if you have to use toilet facilities in a hurry. W Allen Tile Hill