Testun llawn:
I write to you concerning the proposed Local Plan for Warwick District. Having read the letter to you from Chris White MP, I can only say how much I am in agreement. As well as being concerned for developments proposed for Hatton Station where I live, I am also very concerned that once 'leafy Warwickshire' seems to being built on at a rate out of all proportion to local need. I grew up adjacent to this area and spent much of my childhood roaming it. When I returned 26 years ago, I was struck by how little it had essentially changed and how little had been destroyed by unnecessary development. What has happened since reminds me of what happened between the wars when acres of countryside were destroyed by soulless housing development in which people were marooned. Whichever route I take, I can not now drive into Warwick without driving past a large development - Warwick Gates or Hatton Park. You can so easily destroy what people move out of towns to have. As a friend living on Hatton Park said to me recently, 'if the planned development goes ahead, I may as well be living on a suburban estate anywhere, since I will no longer be reminded of this estate's rural location by the views everywhere I look, or be in a community where its possible to feel you know most people.'
And why build mini bits of estate in 'villages' where there is no identified need. Hatton Station does not need 25 extra houses. Access to the village is by a narrow country lane with some difficult bends - according to one of your own planning officers on 21st May 2003. It is not only narrow but has no pavement or grass verge to give a bit of extra space when needed. Access to the largest site (20 houses) is poor, and there are well known problems with the infrastructure in terms of mains drainage. The larger proposed site is a wildlife habitat to which slow-worms were moved a few years ago when another parcel of land was built on. The nearest primary school is not far by car but too far to walk with small children and certainly not along the narrow Station Road with no pavement or grass verge and cars edging by all the time - cars you can't see coming round the bends.
I have mentioned infrastructure but how about primary schools? The one nearest to Hatton Station at Hatton Green also serves Hatton Park and is oversubscribed already. If Hatton Park also has extra housing, and other places in the area too, where are all these children to go? It is not so long ago that village schools were being amalgamated or closed as locally Wroxall was.
We are regularly being asked to use public transport more for the sake of the environment and consequent risk of global warming. Such developments as the Warwick Local Plan proposes, cannot help but have the opposite effect.