Save us from greedy developers and grasping store chains

SO now it starts – developers and speculators, at first unable to believe what the Government’s “Presumption in favour of development” opens up – are jumping in with delight.

We learn of plans for nearly 1,000 houses plus an hotel on the green belt between Huddersfield and the M62. Similar developments being contemplated on the other side of the interchange will set in motion the development of a conurbation linking Huddersfield and Halifax.

Do people not realise what a very thin and fragile belt of green separates the towns and cities of the West Riding, and how easily and rapidly the whole area will coalesce into a conurbation stretching from Chesterfield to Ilkley and from Castleford to Halifax? And what unbelievably immense wealth the exploiters of those green lungs will amass?

Planning departments are going to be overwhelmed as never before, as developers and speculators assemble enormous land banks – all protected with planning approvals – on which they will sit until the return of better times, when their profits will be even more enormous.

And why think that the effects of the “presumption” might stop there?

Why should they? Why not build at Bolton Abbey, Ilkley Moor, National Parks, areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty – or even your local golf club? (Just think what all those acres would raise for housing!)

Bureaucratic plans to throw overboard the present excellent planning system go back to the early 90s; they were not something dreamed up by the present government.

From: Barry Foster, Manor Cottages, High Stakesby, Whitby.

MY heart goes out to the people of Harrogate and Malton who are against the building of a Tesco Supermarket in their towns. When are planners and councillors going to stop all this dreadful intrusion that we have to face?

In the Bradford area, there are three Tesco supermarkets within a three-mile radius.

Something is going wrong somewhere in granting all these applications.

Most areas are well serviced with a variety of supermarkets and a smaller place like Malton surely has sufficient with the ones they have presently.

I have long been a critic of the methods of Tesco and the way they go about getting planning etc.

Shortly we shall be re naming our country ‘Tescoland’. Heaven help us.

From: Sam Coleman, Kirk Lane, Yeadon, Leeds.

IT is time countryside campaigners were more realistic in their condemnation of government planning reforms (Yorkshire Post, September 2).

If there was a greater presumption in favour of regenerating urban sites, the countryside would be under considerably less pressure. But, equally, it is also important that transport needs are factored into any new scheme that is approved – irrespective of whether the location is urban or rural.