I agree with Cllr Rohit Kohli when he says that councillors have a duty of care to local residents (Advertiser, July 25).
Of course they do, the residents are their electorate.
In my opinion that duty is lost within the planning process; in which it is the adherence to planning regulations, each buried in mountains of paragraphs and sub-paragraphs, that is put foremost by the professional planners.
The duty of care should be the first priority not the regulations.
Romsey and surrounding villages are threatened with extensive development and seemingly in the name of profit, by high density development with little or no enhancement to infrastructure or facilities.
Whether it be urban or rural development, the size should be the first consideration and be in keeping and on a scale consistent with the expectations of the local community.
People who live here either originated in a rural area or moved here to be free of a city environment and in many cases paid a premium on house prices to do so.
The natural expectation is that a small town or village would grow slowly, by appropriate scale development: a small estate on the edge of town, or, in a village or hamlet, a house or a small group of appropriately sized dwellings designed to meet local needs.
Such growth only changes the locality gradually, so the expectations of the local people are not swept aside.
Those expectations are important to the people and it ought to be the material consideration for all councils as a duty of care to their constituents.
On present form it will not be long before Braishfield is connected to Romsey and [[Romsey]] to North Baddesley in a continuous urban sprawl.
That means traffic and parking hell, because there is no meaningful public transport.
For example, Wellow residents cannot get to Romsey because a bus service is a distant archaeological memory, so we are forced to travel by car.
Paul Newton,
Buttons Lane,
West Wellow
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