SIR: It was nice of David Carter to offer his sympathy last week in your paper (Chronicle, Letters, September 9), but we, as local people living with the city council decision would like to hear from the councillors who made this mess. They listened to expensive consultants who bent the reality and the officer repeated exactly what the applicant’s agent told her! Nearly 50 truly local people objected to this application and three big landowners from far away supported it.

You report also that Mrs Evans, the committee Chair said about the Quob Stables application: “Development should be led by the community ........ it’s the countryside”! I wonder where she thinks the community of Lower Ashton and Upham are?

People like me wonder if it is worth objecting to an application and if the councillors or their officers even bother to read them. The officers’ presentation was prejudiced and there was nothing, we sitting there at the planning meeting, could say. Just like school!

Yes – it is time to have a better system.

Mrs Syms,

Ashton Lane,

Bishop’s Waltham