Sorry, East Bergholt – Essex grass isn’t greener

SIR – In campaigning to be part of Essex, East Bergholt should be careful what it wishes for (report, April 26).

Colchester’s council has chosen a higher housing target than it needs to, and has plans for not just one, but two new towns, of 9,000 homes and up to 25,000 homes respectively.

The largest, known as “West Tey”, will gobble up 2,500 acres of Essex countryside and engulf villages. Some 8,500 people have signed a petition against West Tey. This has been ignored. Our advice? Don’t do it. Rosie Pearson Secretary, Campaign Against Urban Sprawl in Essex Pattiswick. Essex SIR – Does anyone in the Westminster bubble understand the pressures on rural communities? Covering the countryside with homes may be justified in political circles, but without all the necessary infrastructure and supplementary food production it is a recipe for unrest and political disaster.

It’s needs like those that make villages like East Bergholt talk of moving. John Hinton East Bergholt, Suffolk SIR – Suffolk folk living in the Stour valley long campaigned to be removed from the Colchester post code. Such snobbery is now abandoned in the face of proposed development.

Anyway, Constable’s best landscapes are his views of the Essex countryside – painted while he sat in Suffolk. Terry Fossett Corby Glen, Lincolnshire