JAMES Alexander’s letter to The Press on April 20 continues his party’s failure to address one of the key concerns about Labour’s policy on the green belt.
He says the council’s planning framework is unsound because it doesn’t contain high enough housing targets, saying Labour believes more houses should be built in York.
Yet he still fails to identify where the available land is to accommodate these extra houses.
Labour wants to increase the number of houses built by about 300 a year, but where will these houses be built?
James Alexander claims not in the green belt, but if not there, where?
There aren’t enough available brownfield sites in the city to accommodate such high house-building numbers.
If Labour wants to be taken seriously they need to come clean and say where these houses will be built.
If they believe that building more houses is more important than protecting the green belt, they should say so, rather than keeping up with this attempt to pretend that they can somehow build on brownfield sites that simply don’t exist.
What Labour are proposing is inevitably going to lead to development on the green belt, and to pretend otherwise is disingenuous.
Coun Paul Firth, Liberal Democrat candidate for Haxby and Wigginton.
• DAVE Merrett complains that Labour’s policy on the green belt is being misrepresented (Letters April 19), yet he does nothing to address the concerns raised about their stance.
Labour have still not explained how they plan to combine an increase in the number of houses built in York with protecting the green belt. During the debate at the recent full council meeting, not one Labour councillor managed to come up with a suggestion as to where their hundreds of additional houses a year would go if not in the green belt.
The simple fact is we cannot set the kind of high house-building targets Labour support and protect the green belt at the same time.
It is Labour who misrepresents their own policy by claiming they can have their cake and eat it. They can’t.
Either we build more houses and develop the green belt, or reduce the housing targets, as the Lib Dems have proposed, and save the green belt from development.
After the Conservative’s nomination shambles, they are in no position to prevent Labour going ahead with their plans. Only the Lib Dems can protect York’s green belt from development.
Tommy Spencer, Liberal Democrat Candidate for Dringhouses & Woodthorpe.
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