Save our villages
WE HAVE concerns about mass housing development similar to those in Devon and Hythe (Letters).
On the peninsula of Tendring, on the Essex coast, we have to build 10,000 new homes in the next 20 years. There are plenty of existing houses for sale in the area, and we suspect that many of the more affordable new homes will be sold to London boroughs to enable their tenants to move out of the city.
Until the ‘local plan’ for our district is finalised next year, it’s a free-for-all for developers, who are rushing to get in applications for estates of up to 300 houses on fields and farmland around the villages and small towns of Frinton-on-Sea, Walton-on-the-Naze, Kirby-le-Soken and Kirby Cross.
This area is served only by country lanes and there are no plans to build any new roads ( or any other infrastructure) and our roads can barely cope with existing traffic.
We have a beautiful coastline and visitors enjoy our beaches all year round, but the area gets gridlocked in summer. Most people heading to and from the coast pass, a few miles inland, along the narrow High Street of the old village of Thorpe-le-Soken, causing miles of tailbacks.
Gradual increases in population and housing can be tolerated, but housing on the scale that is now threatened cannot be. Jobs here are mainly in retail, seasonal or involve long commutes out of the area. There is a shortage of GPs and the schools are full, not to mention the sewers.
We raise objections to every development application submitted, and councillors seem to be on our side — but I fear that, in the end, the developers’ large wallets will prevail and our peaceful existence will be gone for ever.
Ms CHRIS WALTERS, Kirby-le-Soken, Essex.
WE ARE suffering the same fate here in South Warwickshire. Our local town, Stratford-upon-Avon, is being choked to extinction because it has been forced to build so many faceless housing estates, yet our road infrastructure is medieval.
All surrounding villages are suffering the same fate: estates of identical boxes which no one except buy-to-let landlords can afford and which are cut off from the community, as they are built mainly on green fields on the edge of settlements. The latest application is for developments which will impact on views across the historic Edgehill battlefield.
Government policy is setting village against village, street against street, neighbour against neighbour as the greed of landowners and developers leads to everyone becoming a nimby.
It’s ruining communities and the very fabric of village life.
DEE McGOWAN, Kineton, Warks.
LAND near where I live has been earmarked for development. It is considered an ideal site, as it’s near the village railway station.
Our hospitals and schools are already stretched to the limit dealing with existing residents, but this is a minor detail in the Government’s eyes.
What this site currently has on it is corn — the stuff that makes bread. Don’ t worry, George and Dave, about newts, songbirds and landscapes, let’s talk about food.
You won’t remember World War II, when the country was close to starvation until the Canadians and Americans stepped in to feed us. Every scrap of land was used to grow food — we all had to Dig for Victory.
There is no talk of using ‘brownfield’ sites because there’s much less profit to be made on them. No, the developers carry on building on fertile land. Unlike some other countries, we have no desert or mountains, only good soil.
When George and Dave get old, when cancer and dementia have been eliminated and they have been patched up with spare parts and have voted against euthanasia, what then?
The rest of the world won’t feed them: it has its own people to look after. Yet they carry on building.
CATHERINE CROW, Rochester, Kent.
WHEN animals are outstripping their habitat, humans move in and cull some of them.
This ensures that there is enough feeding ground for the remainder to survive. When humans outstrip their habitat, though, we just build more and more houses.
D. BROWN, Harwich, Essex.