SO Vale of White Horse District Council think that the Waitrose store planned for Botley Road would have been better sited at West Way in Botley (May 8). The sad truth is that they’re probably right and that it could have turned out that way, had they listened to us.

In their consultation two years ago local people said that they wanted improvements to West Way, but never said they wanted a massive superstore, or the demolition of sheltered housing for 65 older people, with a planned ‘phasing’ of building which would leave Botley with inadequate facilities for two years. If they had listened and acted on what people said to them, we might be seeing a modest-sized supermarket being built right now. Instead the Vale cabinet have dug themselves into a political hole, publicly supporting an unpopular proposal by developers who seem interested in money rather than improving the community.

The proposals for Botley are based on a supermarket of 8,000 square metres at a time when there are no takers for the major store site on the Charter development in Abingdon and when national supermarket chains are saying they have no plans for new large supermarkets.

If the Vale give the go-ahead to the Doric proposals, they will be saddling Botley and Oxford with a white elephant that will damage Botley’s economic development for a generation. Along with hurried consultations over housing allocations and proposals to remove bits of Green Belt, they have lost the trust of a huge number of local people.

The sooner decision making is changed from the current situation where the Cabinet (four men and one woman from the same political party) make key decisions, mostly behind closed doors with no public or press access, the sooner they may find that they do not make such mistakes again.

GORDON STOKES, The Glebe, Cumnor