Coun Geoffrey Vaughan, chairman, Pyons Group Parish Council, says affordable homes in the wrong place (From Hereford Times)

Coun Geoffrey Vaughan, chairman, Pyons Group Parish Council, says affordable homes in the wrong place

7:00am Sunday 5th February 2012 in Letters

I WRITE in response to your report (January 19) of plans for housing on a hay meadow in Canon Pyon.

The article was an accurate precis of the planning committee meeting at Brockington, but I feel there must be other villages with the same problems that face us.

The parish council saw a need for affordable housing some years ago with the changing demographics and approached the county council for help.

Now we await the final decision on the scheme proposed by housing services and Two Rivers and supported by the planning department – on a site with a history of failed planning applications, almost total current opposition and with a housing density and design entirely out of keeping with a rural setting.

The comment by the Two Rivers spokesman that the development meets the requirements of the 2010 Housing Needs Study needs qualifying. This study, unlike those done previously, covered an area beyond that of our group thus conveniently increasing the perceived need.

We, however, who set the ball rolling, appear powerless to influence the parameters or the outcome of the scheme.

Yet we still want houses that are affordable particularly for our young and we have an alternative site with all the advantages not possessed by the other – size, safety and centrality – and none of its disadvantages.

If Localism and the Big Society mean anything then the views of the group parish council, our county councillor Adrian Blackshaw and a local referendum need to be heeded, otherwise it will simply confirm the widely held belief that local councils are an irrelevance, controlled by the unelected and unaccountable.

COUN GEOFFREY VAUGHAN, Chairman, Pyons Group Parish Council.