Should we use green belt land for housing?
Echo 3 November 2008, letter from Cllr Frank Tomlin

WE face a choice that we would rather not have to make.
    National planning policies, coupled with government housing targets, drive local planning authorities to steadily increase the housing density within the currently designated urban areas.
    Pack 'em in and stack 'em high is the underlying theme. To achieve the housing numbers, we are building more and smaller flats, fewer and fewer houses.
   Gardens and green spaces in the towns are disappearing fast. What in the 1980s was officially described as "town cramming" and taboo, is now encouraged.
    The result is that we are slowly, but surely, eroding the quality of life for town dwellers. That's most of the population.
   We are now at a juncture where we must seriously consider taking land out of the green belt for housing or making life intolerable through overcrowding in the urban areas.
   The green belt's sacred cow status is becoming less and less tenable by the day

Cllr FRANK TOMLIN
Ruskin Dene, Billericay