SIR,

Christmas is a good time to put in planning applications, but even so it is remarkable that Haberdashers' Monmouth School for Girls (HMSG) should resubmit the application to change the front gardens of two houses it now owns into a school car park.

This is exactly the same application as the one which was rejected by the Monmouthshire County Council (MCC) Planning Committee in the summer.

It has been repackaged, but the part which requires planning permission, to build a car park in the front gardens of numbers 1 and 3, The Gardens (ironic, isn't it?) remains just as it was before, though it is now joined by landscaping the existing HMSG car park, which does not require planning permission.

Yes, it would be nice if the school could improve their fence along The Gardens, which has been a bit of an eyesore for years, but replacing green gardens with a car park is definitely bad for the neighbourhood and the environment.

This is a change of use from residential to commercial, and planners need to take this issue seriously, and protect us from the visual intrusion, noise, smells and pollution it would cause.

But, as we've seen from many recent letters to the Beacon, building over gardens seems to be a growth industry in Monmouth.

At the last application, planning officials never even discussed the undesirability of a change of use, but the committee was wiser.

This time, the school admits that incursion of the car park has already damaged the environment, but uses this to argue that, therefore, more won't matter.

Of course, MCC Planning Committee should say this resubmission of a rejected proposal is a waste of taxpayers' money and MCC staff time, but the planning system in Monmouthshire moves in mysterious ways.

Watch this space, we need to stop it changing.

Phil Bly

(Monmouth)