I am writing in support of Helen Marshall as another barmy idea is trotted out that the Green Belt is not fit for purpose. The facts that the Vale housing plan are based on (the SCHMA report) are wholly discredited and evidence suggests that the houses that are proposed are not for local people at all but for economic migrants and people pushed out of London by price, benefit reform and the bedroom tax.

Oxford Mail:

Helen Marshall, the director of the Oxfordshire branch of the Campaign to Protect Rural England

Secondly, there are a million empty homes in this country and some of them are here. Surely the compulsory purchase of even a quarter of that figure, along with the use of brownfield sites, is better than the destruction of Green Belt just to build yet more “ticky tacky boxes” to quote Private Eye this month?

The whole point of the Green Belt is to keep Britain a green and pleasant land and what really riles me is that there are imaginative alternatives, like flats above shops, redevelopments of town centres, brownfield sites and empty houses that could be used, but no, let’s cover the Vale in concrete. The countryside and Green Belt matter and I for one will fight for it.

MN Fysh

Whitecross

Abingdon

Today’s letters

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