This development is so deeply unpopular

There was an excellent article in the Advertiser last week on the protest walk on the golf course the previous Friday.

This was the fourth, very well attended demonstration organised by the Maidenhead Great Park campaign, demonstrating very clearly the depth of feeling amongst residents against the proposed development of the golf course.

This totally unnecessary development is deeply unpopular, and is not wanted by the residents of the town.

Using the Government’s own figures for new housing need, published in 2018, these show that the majority of new homes to be built by the end of the BLP in 2033 have either already been built, or have planning permission granted.

The remaining 400 houses still to be built can readily be accommodated on existing, already identified brownfield sites in Maidenhead.

There is therefore no need or justification to build a single new house on the golf course.

Our council, however, have used old, outof-date statistics, and cleverly manipulated these in the BLP in order to justify building 2,600 new homes on the golf course.

Their desperation to do this is for purely financial reasons, as already reported many times.

This proposal will result in payments to

the council from the developer CALA Homes of some £250million, effectively clearing their huge self-inflicted debt, a result of years of financial incompetence and mismanagement.

This is not a valid reason for the destruction of a beautiful, environmental green asset, and if these plans go ahead, it will be an act of criminal, environmental vandalism.

Cllr Haseler, cabinet member for planning, and other council leaders, when are you going to start listening to the wishes and requests of residents, who you were elected to represent and support?

You are certainly not doing so at the moment.

Cllr Haseler, and 'council spokesmen' keep repeating the same platitudes of misleading and untruthful statements, which were also repeated endlessly by his predecessor.

Are you hoping that if you repeat the same things often enough, that residents will start to believe the nonsense you are saying?

As has been stated many times in the past, the residents of Maidenhead are neither stupid nor naive.

They need, and deserve a caring council that listens to their wishes and requests, not one that blindly follows its own agenda at all costs, regardless of residents.

The opportunity to achieve this change is the local elections in May, 2023.

JOHN HUDSON Rushington Avenue

Maidenhead