HARDLY a week goes by without letters or articles featuring protests against proposed residential development in York.

The emerging trend is of bandwagon-hopping activists whose objectives are to delay and block planning applications with worrying consequences.

The planning process allows people affected by proposed developments to make their objections known, and these are considered by elected councillors.

This seems to be fair.

However, there are individuals who are not local and may not have valid reasons for objecting, but they stoke up anti-development feeling, often using arguments that do not have any basis in planning terms.

They manipulate the system by provoking local opinion using this newspaper, petitions, marches and leaflets.

The apparent strength of local opinion then acts as a distraction to councillors, who, eager not to offend the electorate, vote against the applications even when council officers - expert in the interpretation of planning laws - recommend approval.

This often results in a lengthy and costly appeal process, which the council regularly loses.

The award of costs is not the only damage to the local economy. At a time when there is a shortage of affordable housing, the actions of these individuals only makes matters worse.

There is a hardcore of intelligent self-appointed spokespeople for York's anti-development mafia, and their latest campaigns have featured on these pages recently.

The developments they are trying to stop are not on green belt land, but on brownfield: Birch Park, the Barbican and Burton Croft.

Are the protesters' arguments for the benefit of most York people, or is their distaste for developers making a profit their real agenda?

I have been employed in the building industry in York for 28 years and seek to put forward a contra-view to the often skewed opinions of these individuals.

Paul S Cordock,

Durlston Drive,

Strensall,

York.

Updated: 10:10 Wednesday, February 25, 2004