CLLR Reed (Letters, July 1) seeks to claim credit for South Bucks District Council over the inspector's decision to dismiss the appeal on Waldenbury, Holtspur, and to imply that this outcome was "despite" views expressed by the Beaconsfield Campaign Group.
The proposal was for 44 dwellings to the hectare at Oxford Road, Holtspur.
It is a matter of record that Holtspur Planning Group, under the aegis of BCG, has submitted a series of carefully drafted documents.
These did two things. They accepted there is a presumption that the site can be developed.
Cllr Reed is quite wrong therefore to suggest that Beaconsield Campaign Group is against the principle of development. They also set out the reasons, with the relevant evidence, as towhy the planning application should be refused.
A main worry for residents was the assertion by planning officers in documentation, that the site is sustainable for intensive urbanisation and residents were being "unrealistic" to believe that the lack of an effective public transport option, employment, health and other services were grounds for arguing otherwise.
This wrong headed language was an open invitation to the developers to try their luck with an appeal.
My group made the strongest case in our written representations to the inspector on the public transport option, traffic, the infrastructure deficit issues and other matters.
South Bucks District Council put nothing forward on these points, which was possibly the reason why the inspector was left to conclude in her decision that she did not "have sufficient information" to form a judgement on them. But at least Beaconsfield Campaign Group's efforts appear to have headed off the arguments in these areas put forward by the developers.
BCG identified and submitted on all the reasons the inspector identified as grounds for dismissing the appeal, including one the lower ground level of neighbouring properties to the appeal site which South Bucks District Council did not.
Cllr Reed really has no grounds to belittle or misrepresent Beaconsfield Campaign Group efforts on behalf of the community; it is his planning officers he should be questioning about their wholly misguided interpretation of national housing and transportation policies relating to sustainable development.
F Bradbury, Chairman, BCG Holtspur Planning Group, Oxford Road, Beaconsfield,
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