Councils are the guardians of our heritage

I’m afraid the article in last week’s Courier about Chris Elliott’s proposal for a deal with the prospective developers of huge areas of land to the south of Warwick and Whitnash does little to assuage the fears of residents and objectors. It continues to look as though the interests of developers come to the fore at the district council and those of residents, particularly those from Warwick, take a back seat.

I don’t know what processes the district council normally follows but is it not strange that the council’s officers are being asked to produce a master plan for the development of areas that are the subject of hundreds of objections before our elected representatives are given a chance to consider the objections?

I may be old-fashioned in expecting a planning process where officers make recommendations on objections and members make the decisions before they move on to the next stage of the plan making process. It seems as though they are jumping the gun here.

We know the Revised Development Strategy is bad for Warwick because of development proposals that threaten to overwhelm the town and its services, and flood it with traffic. What is also alarming is the plan’s total disregard for heritage and conservation. It is hard to even find the words used in the document and astounding that the potential impact of the development proposals on the heritage assets that are so important to our local economy and the attractiveness of our towns appear to have received little attention.

It should not be necessary but perhaps the district council need to be reminded that they are guardians of our heritage and our environment and that members represent residents and, finally, that developers really are not “colleagues” of local authority planners - and officers should stop addressing them as such.

Anthony King, Chairman, Save Warwick