Frank is right about green belt
Echo 7 November 2008, letter from Henry Patterdale

AT long last someone is brave enough - Basildon Council chairman Frank Tomlin - to question the validity of the green belt policy in public.
   It takes a brave man to put his head above the parapet, but he is right. Town centres are losing car parks, shops, restaurants and many, many more public places because flats and houses are being crammed in because that is the only place developers can get permission to build.
   Town centres should mean just that. Places where people congregate to shop, bank and socialise.
   There are certain parcels of land within the green belt that would be ideally sited to be tagged on to the existing conurbations without over-stretching the existing infrastructure and amenities.
   It's all very well for Alan Davies to say councils should look to use brown-field sites, but it is pointless developing a disused factory miles away from existing amenities.
   The fact remains that some green belt/green field land is ideal to make sustainable development and some brownfield land is simply sited in the wrong place.
   Each town should make a reappraisal of its green belt. We desperately need more houses and they need to be situated in the right place and if they are situated in the right place the rest of the green belt would be saved and enjoyed by future generations as could our town centres.

HENRY PATTERDALE
North Benfleet Hall Road
Wickford