Scandalous waste

Portsmouth City Council’s spending of £8m of taxpayer’s money to survey the seabed at Tipner marshes is a scandalous waste of money and out of touch with the reality of the 21st century.

There is current case in West Sussex where Horsham District Council are proposing a site for 3,500 homes next to a ‘re-wilding’ project which is part of a corridor for birds, bats and mammals.

The largest conservation groups in Britain have joined forces to call on the government to block the housing plan. They refer to the government’s 25 year plan, published in October last year, for a nationwide environmental recovery to enhance nature and reduce CO2 emissions.

They say that government housing quotas are subsidiary to the overriding environmental and global warming commitment, and refer to the government’s pledge to build ‘The right houses in the right places’.

That is exactly the argument against the Tipner ‘super-peninsula’ project. It is out of date. It has been overtaken by a much more urgent need to protect nature and the planet.

The existing land area at Tipner can be sensibly built up with industry and housing, which has always been the Local Plan policy.

But to carry that plan beyond the bounds of the existing brownfield into the marshes site is a huge mistake, both for nature conservation and global warming policy.

It will never get government backing.

PCC are spending £8m on engineering surveys which are totally unnecessary and unsustainable.

The whole idea is out of date and should be abandoned as quickly as possible.

Jerry Bamforth Sennen Place, Port Solent

Not only is it the extra traffic but the infrastructure... is not there for all these extra families ALBERT SOMERSET