I THINK Messrs Grainger and Caulfield, and the rest of the city planners, may be seeing things through rose, or probably green, coloured spectacles ("So has the Green belt done its job?", August 3).

Green belt status may have given some protection to certain areas around York but to say that "without the green belt, areas such as Copmanthorpe, Bishopthorpe and Haxby could have been swallowed up by development" beggars belief.

Mr Grainger and Mr Caulfield need to get out more and look at what grief their planning misdemeanours are causing in and around our city's green belt.

They may consider that they are safeguarding the environment while the truth is our villages are being choked by development.

The green belt may have protected certain areas between the city and the villages that lay on the periphery of the green belt but the high levels of development that planners have allowed within the villages are turning them into shanty towns and ghettos.

It is time now to call a halt to the infill that is destroying our villages just as much as if they had been swallowed up by an ever-expanding city.

What we must do now is ensure the new York Development Framework protects existing communities and gives far more consideration to local village plans.

David Smith,

Church Street,

Copmanthorpe,

York.

Updated: 09:37 Tuesday, August 09, 2005