SIR,

Stuart Wilson's childish and petulant attack on his fellow councillors does him no credit.

Nor does his spurious attempt to connect the recent town council vote on a brownfield site to the plans for Wonastow Road.

Surely all planning meetings consider each application on its own merits. Don't they? He claims knowledge of "the outside world" as if that were an alien concept to us ordinary townsfolk while, at the same time, ignoring the problems under his nose.

Quite why Mr Wilson was so reluctant to mention the location of the proposed development in his letter when it was reported openly elsewhere in the Beacon is beyond me.

Perhaps he is a graduate of the Susan White smoke-and-mirrors school of political manoeuvre. We are talking about the proposal to demolish the vicarage at Hillcrest, Wyesham, and to develop land behind it which was defeated at the recent town council planning meeting.

I see from the plans that space has been made available for 25 cars to be parked on the site. Add these to the 50 to 80 extra vehicles already likely at the old school development and then consider this.

The two roads leading to the upper Wyesham area are now effectively single lane due to the roadside parking at the bottom of the Mayhill and the bottleneck at the top of Wyesham avenue.

Those who are forced to negotiate the Mayhill parked-car, double-mini-roundabout and bridge traffic-light junction on a regular basis will attest that the last thing it needs is an increase in traffic numbers.

Then we have the human element of the application which usually gets lost in the mire of legal and political argument.

Mr Wilson would have you believe that the only issue here is that the site is 'brownfield' and therefore ripe for development but he fails to address the issue of access.

The proposed route lies through a cul-de-sac and involves destroying part of a resident's garden and the complete demolition of a perfectly healthy building.

The majority of residents of this quiet cul-de-sac are pensioners and include at least two ex-service personnel in their number. They thoughtfully and deliberately bought their properties in Hillcrest many years ago safe in the knowledge that the only place their peaceful road led to was a church building and, surely, nobody in their right mind would tear that down and turn a tranquil dead-end in to a busy thoroughfare.

Apparently Mr Wilson would! Trailing his questionable build-at-all-costs dogma, he asks "where the future generations growing up in Monmouth are going to live?" It is the wrong question.

He should be asking under what conditions all the children who will soon be living in 42 new Wyesham homes and 390+ Wonastow Road houses are going to be educated? Where will they work? How will they get their cars through gridlock? Who will insure their houses after they have flooded for the third time?

And until he can develop an infrastructure capable of supporting his future generations, a little more consideration for his elders and betters living in Hillcrest would not go amiss.

Chris Williams

(Monmouth)