Sir – I write in connection with Peter Rawcliffe’s letter (Letters, February 23). The Environment Agency has put in a planning application for similar work to be carried out at Rushey Weir, also on supposed health and safety grounds.

But, in conjunction with this, the EA has also put in an application for temporary construction of a site compound during the construction work at Rushey Weir. However, the ‘description’ section of their application is misleading at best.

It makes no mention of the civil engineering works that will also be required, in order to build the road that will be needed for the EA’s contractors to get to and from this compound.

The EA already has a road that goes to Rushey Weir, so why waste even more money on building another one? They will say that the existing road is on the wrong side of the river. They and/or their contractors already use barges to move equipment, large or small, from one side of the river to the other and that this would be much cheaper than building another road.

The ‘consultation’ period for this application has not even ended, and the application has not been approved and yet EA contractors have started work this morning (Monday, February 27). It must be a done deal then. Trebles all round!

On one last note, as health and safety seem so important to the EA, they must surely have taken into account the more than 1,620 (yes, one thousand, six hundred and twenty) earth-moving lorry loads that will lumber into and out of the traffic on the Bampton road, and do so on the blind bend at the bottom of Buckland hill.

James Vaughan-Fowler, Buckland Marsh