YOUR review of the latest round of York's Green Belt proposals (February 27) came as little surprise to York Natural Environment Trust (YNET), which has been campaigning to protect and improve green spaces around York for 14 years.

What does surprise us is the bizarre logic that is biting chunks out of York's green spaces. First we are told that there is need for industrial land for employment creation. Then we are told that, since a sufficient workforce does not already exist here, it must be imported and new homes provided for it.

It is not surprising that the expected growth of York is made up, according to the council's own estimates, of 97 per cent incomers and only three per cent increase in the city's inhabitants.

The city council wants to cater for this outrageous imbalance in city growth at the expense of our Green Belt. It means that the council duped residents into supporting development at the expense of green field sites in the recent Green Belt survey, when it claimed that this was essential for the future wellbeing of York residents and their children.

What worries us in the main is that a lot of this is being done by stealth. The York local plan inquiry was abandoned because the council had failed to adopt a Green Belt: the inquiry is now planned for 2003.

In the meantime large areas of green space are being given planning permission and will be outside the realm of the inquiry when it finally happens.

Mick Phythian,

Chair, YNET,

Monkton Road, York.

Updated: 10:25 Wednesday, March 06, 2002