SIR — I note from the sustainability assessment of strategic development sites within Winchester, that the Bushfield Camp area has four objectives against its use, annotated as “Problematic and improbable because of known sustainability issues which would mean that mitigation or negotiation would be difficult and/or expensive”. The four objectives are: housing; biodiversity; heritage and landscape & soils.

Only one such annotation, for landscape & soils, is levelled against the use of Barton Farm, and nothing was mentioned about the loss of valuable farmland.

It would appear that these somewhat selective assessments have been slanted to favour Barton Farm for development rather than the Bushfield Camp area.

The recent proposal that Bushfield Camp could be developed into a Knowledge Park appears to negate the impact of these assessments in rolling out this site for development.

Such a Knowledge Park would better be located alongside the excellent Intech site, and Bushfield Camp used for housing. Or was this idea suddenly dreamed up in order to bolster the council’s determination to proceed with the development of Barton Farm?

The sustainability assessment also states that with regard to transport, Bushfield Camp has “potential sustainability issues, where mitigation and/or negotiation are possible”, while the transport impact resulting from the development of Barton Farm is assessed as neutral.

How can such a biased transport assessment be made against Barton Farm, when I understand the Government inspector recommended, in his appeal inquiry report in 2005, that as the current traffic problems at the City Road/Worthy Road and Andover Road junction would be considerably exacerbated by this development, it should not take place until the problems were resolved?

The council appears to be happy to ignore this fact in the misguided belief that the 2,000 homeowners will prefer to walk, cycle and bus into the city centre, rather than use their cars.

The criteria behind the present Government’s imposed housing targets has now been dramatically affected by the present financial crisis, and a change of government would result in these targets being abolished in favour of local councils deciding on their own housing requirements.

Therefore, should our council be signing up to such a controversial major development at Barton Farm before the next General Election?

B D Porter, Park Close, Winchester.