A more cynical person might believe that there is a massive conspiracy to smother the Vale of White Horse, Wantage and Grove Councils and the electors with such a mass of detailed information that some planning applications will escape the scrutiny that is essential to ensure that undesirable development is prevented and, hopefully, that there will be some community benefits as well as just houses.

With major developments totalling some 5,000 houses proposed west of Grove and on the Crab Hill area behind Charlton Village, imminent appeals against refusal for a nursing home next to the Mably Way Health Centre and for homes for the elderly on the police station/Courthouse site in Church Street, two proposals for hundreds of houses at Stockham and numerous other applications for development in Wallingford Street and Newbury Street having been filed, I confess to being unable to digest and sometimes to understand the welter of details, so much so, that information becomes disinformation within my inadequate brain.

How Julie Mabberley, manager of the Wantage and Grove Campaign Group (www.wantageandgrove.

org) keeps abreast of all the plans and dates involved for making comments to the Vale planners, the plethora of meetings etc, and to keep the public so well informed I do not know but I am grateful and I am certain many other residents are too, that the Group continues to look after our interests.

Just after the 1939-45 war, Wantage saw a major growth when the UKAEA built the Charlton House estate for employees at AERE Harwell and the infrastructure and services have never kept pace with subsequent housing development and the expanding population.

Now, I fear, the situation is doomed to deteriorate because I can see no way that the planning authority and our elected representatives can regain control.

Jack Loftin, Charlton Village Road, Wantage