National Trust alarm over the White Cliffs

SIR – The National Trust has either failed to do its homework or is scaremongering (“Race to save White Cliffs from threat of development”, September 4).

Dover District Council never grants building permission for anything near the cliff-edge for fear of causing chalk falls. I believe too that it is an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. Janet Milliken

Folkestone, Kent

SIR – The National Trust has lost sight of its main objective: the conservation of our landscape and our built heritage.

In the Quantocks, to the north of Taunton lies one of the first places to be designated as an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB). It also contains an upland heath that is notified as a Site of Special Scientific Interest. Despite this, Taunton Deane council is to consider on September 20 two joint planning applications to build 1,600 homes, of which 300 houses are on land belonging to the National Trust within a mile or so of the AONB boundary.

While the National Trust may hold this land as an investment, it should not contravene its prime objects by exercising its power of sale. Dorothea Bradley

Taunton, Somerset