COUNCILLORS on the Green Belt Working Group were wrong to resist the call by English Heritage for an Environmental Capacity Study for York (January 29).
The draft local plan does little more than say where future development is expected to take place and what effect it may have on the local area. There is no study of the cumulative long-term effect of all this development on the whole city and its residents.
The report put before councillors stated that much of the work carried out on the Chester environmental capacity study had already been done in York as part of the local plan. If this is the case then the claim that considerable costs would be incurred does not stand up because it should be relatively easy to collate this information, leaving only a small amount of work to achieve completion.
As for delays to the local plan, the meeting was told that this will not be completed before 2007 at the earliest.
We already know that York has a traffic problem and that in many cases the city council is virtually powerless to prevent the excesses of over-eager developers. These points were agreed by both political parties at the meeting.
However, only an in-depth environmental capacity study can tell us what problems may lie unsuspected round the corner. It is not ourselves and our present rush for change that should concern us but the quality of life of our children and their children after them who we hope will continue to believe that York is a special place.
Alec Acomb,
Hillcrest Avenue,
Nether Poppleton, York.
...SO Coun Dave Merrett, local Labour leader, is now in favour of having an environmental capacity study undertaken in York (January 29).
That's the same Labour group who were in control of York for 20 years and never suggested such a course of action?
Is this the same Dave Merrett who has been a member - and a onetime chair - of the local planning committee and who failed through the four years of preparation of the local plan to mention the need for a formal study?
Is this the same Dave Merrett who complains about the delay in getting the local plan established? If so, how many more months would the preparation of a capacity study add to the process of adopting a development plan - which is already unlikely to be in place before 2007?
Most people realise that the size of York is not being determined locally. Central government is setting growth rates for housing.
These housing allocations were divided up between councils in Yorkshire by the regional assembly over two years ago.
And who was York's representative on the Yorkshire and Humberside assembly at that time?
Yes, Coun Dave Merrett!
Coun Keith Hyman
The Old Village,
Huntington, York.
Updated: 10:02 Tuesday, February 03, 2004
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