Our front garden (From Malvern Gazette)

Our front garden

12:00pm Thursday 7th March 2013 in Letters

 I AM responding to the article in last week’s Gazette with the title ‘Housing site one of the most suitable’.

It is doubtless true that development will happen in Malvern, but what authority does Andrew Boughton have to tell us what is or isn’t a suitable site?

As a planning agent acting for the landowner and would-be property developer, he would say that.

His case depends on classifying the Rothwell Road site as a brown-field site. If this former recreational area does constitute a brown-field site, I must need my eyesight tested.

The Rothwell Road site lies entirely within the Malvern Hills Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty and, having read the landscape assessment report commissioned by the developers themselves, it seems clear any significant built development would be in violation of the planning guidelines.

No mitigating action can screen or protect the view from the hills and when it is lost, it is lost for ever. This is not just someone’s back yard – it is Malvern’s front garden. Don’t let it be spoiled!

John McWhirter

Malvern Wells