Published: 17/02/2008 00:00 -
Updated: 05/02/2010 14:44
SIR - Thank you for a well balanced article on the proposed Gypsy caravan site at Bletsoe.
One trusts now the councillors will follow the format laid down by the Government via the East of England Regional Plan to identify sites according to necessary criteria.
Colin Deas
Bletsoe
SIR - I write to you following the front page article on Sunday 10th February 2008. I was very disturbed to read about the e-mails between John Copeland and David Bailey.
I would like to let you know my personal objections to the planning application. I live in Bletsoe and I am a parish councillor and I agree whole heartedly with the objections made in the article.
The site concerned backs onto our proposed Conservation Area and this would spoil the whole outlook. The values of all our properties would decrease significantly and this of course is a major concern with whom I have had contact.
The borough council has not fulfilled the Government criteria for finding suitable sites and seem to have looked at this one to fill more than half their requirement of 15 new pitches to 2011.
If planning was to be passed on this site it would be a travesty as none of the Government guidelines have been met by this proposed development.
Debbie Hall
Bourne End Lane
Bletsoe
SIR - Gypsies and travellers have a right to suitable living places. But a poorly positioned site hard up against the gardens of the tiny village of Bletsoe can only satisfy the rights of Gypsies at the expense of the rights of the settled community.
It seems that Bletsoe is the subject of reverse discrimination! Bletsoe families have the absolute right to the peaceful enjoyment of their homes and family life if the application is approved this will be very seriously affected. A responsible Borough Council should take this issue extremely seriously, and it saddens us that we, the villagers of Bletsoe, appear to be expendable in order to provide the officers concerned with 'a quick fix' for the Borough's quota of pitches.
Indeed, the Borough Council, as a public authority, will be acting unlawfully if it denies these Human Rights and natural justice not only for Bletsoe people but ALL the neighbouring Parish Councils who unanimously object to the proposal.
Nearly 3000 people can't be wrong! Applications for residential uses on this agricultural land have been consistently refused over the years: why approve this one which will hand 'Woody' a windfall in increased land values while knocking hundreds of thousands of pounds off the value of village properties?
There are more than 60 pensioners in Bletsoe who have worked hard all their lives to buy their houses, and wanted to spend their twilight years in tranquillity and safety - but will they be able to?
Only if the Members of the Planning Committee stick to the rules, and do not interfere with Bletsoe's rights to a fair deal!
Bletsoe resident
SIR - I was somewhat disappointed to read that Borough councillors had already been considering using our beautiful village to site a gypsy camp over a year ago in Feb 10th's BoS.
As a resident of the village I am really angry and upset that the council does not seem to have taken in to account our human rights. No one in this village wants the site as I am sure that the council is aware of on account of all the letters against it.
It concerns me that it will upset the balance of our wonderful community with the population explosion which the site will no doubt cause, not to mention that in my experience and that of another letter writer in last weeks BOS re the gypsies at ASDA, the eyesore and noise pollution. We do not have any facilities to support an increased population, ie no shop, school or bus service.
It will also affect the value of mine and other residents property prices as like it or not people will no longer want to move in to our village.
Do we not have a right to decide what happens to shape our village?
I ask the councillors who are making the decision on the planning permission, If it was their village, would they want the gypsy site next to their homes?
I think I know that the answer would be NO! Then where is our choice?
Jill Dainton
Bletsoe
SIR - I read your article, "Village to be damned", with more than usual care last Sunday.
As a member of a small village community, up against powerful bureaucrats, it is comforting to know that you are able to throw light on to what seems to be a rather murky alliance between the gypsies and the so called "planners".
"Planning" implies a logical thought process designed to arrive at the best solution to what is admittedly a difficult problem. What appears to be happening here is a plot designed to save the "planners" the trouble of doing any planning at all.
Jonathan Knights
Bletsoe
SIR - If any of you drive down the A6 towards Rushden and the eye catches the attractive 'Falcon Inn' on the left, you will miss the hamlet of Bletsoe as if it did not exist because it lays back from the road with one turning into it and the same road running through it.
The hamlet was mentioned in the Doomsday Book and was also the fifteenth century home of Lady Margaret Beaufort, the mother of Henry VII, now it is the home to less than 400 souls.
There are no shops, schools, buses and the only pub lays outside the hamlet's boarders. This historical part of Britain is suddenly under threat because Mr Thomas Allen, who is not even a resident of Bletsoe can see a way of making a quick buck, and Mr David Bailey , head of planning at Bedford Borough Council can see a quick way of solving a problem by dumping a gypsy site on the hamlet.
'Good Old Tommy Allen', he says as if they are old friends. Perhaps they are. Would Mr Bailey say 'Good Old Tommy' if he were a resident of Bletsoe?
The plan is to site sixteen pitches north of the village. An average family size of four would increase the population by almost 20 per cent at a stroke and the new residents would not be the romantic gypsies of D H Lawrence's novels.
One has to ask the question, 'why is the council even considering placing gypsies at a site designated as a conservation area, with no facilities and placed so close to a dangerous major road, and where the gypsies collectively could pose a great threat to the local residents?'
Unless it solves a problem for the council. Beds on Sunday reported that there are 2000 signatures on the petition complaining about this, which means that if every man, woman and child in Bletsoe signed it, then over 1600 others from surrounding villages have supported them.
The one voice that seems to be absent from all this is the voice of Mr Alistair Burt, the MP for North East Bedfordshire. He has been ominously absent from any meeting held because it is reported he is busy furthering his ambitions with his new job following his promotion.
Well, Mr Burt, if your ambition is to be chauffeured around in a ministerial car following the next General Election, you must first be returned to office and 2000 signatories will be looking very closely at your input into this very sorry affair.
George Bernard,
Grosvenor Crescent Mews, London
SIR - I was heartened to read your report 'Village to be Damned' this week and to see there is some support for our little village (population 130).
We in Bletsoe are thoroughly disheartened to think that a Planning Department/Committee has the power to destroy our lives with such an arbitrary decision.
While gypsies and travellers have human rights we in the settled community do too! All too often these days the rights of the law abiding majority are completely overlooked in favour of 'minority groups' such as for example gypsies.
The land in question has been refused planning permission on a number of occasions in the past for single residential purposes by previous owners.
Why then should it be considered suitable now for multiple occupancy by gypsies?
For the majority of us the only investment we have is in our homes.
This application, if it goes ahead, will reduce the value of all homes in the village by at least 50 per cent (if we are able to sell them at all) with no prospect of compensation from Bedford Borough Council.
Mr Allen on the other hand will make a significant return on his investment and a very respectable annual income from this site.
130 lives and investments ruined for the sake of the human rights of a minority group. Tell me, where are our human rights? Is that fair?
A Field-Foster
The Old Rectory
Bletsoe
SIR - With reference to the article in last Sunday's newspaper in respect of the proposed gypsy development in Bletsoe, the additional two fields that are mentioned as being owned by Mr Allen are in fact all adjacent to each other.
Therefore, the site would be created as one development that sprawls into the other two fields both of which are adjacent to residential properties not creating the peaceful haven that you are led to believe. If the application is passed, based on the fact that it doesn't meet any of the Governement's criteria, then this would be an absolute travesty and it would potentially hide the fact that the Borough Council appears to have done no other investigation to find significantly more suitable sites.
Chris Hall
Bourne End Lane, Bletsoe
SIR - I must express my dismay at your front page headline, which appears to me to have a racist dimension.
I would not be surprised if residents of Bletsoe do not wish to have a caravan site for travellers in their neighbourhood.
Of course many are concerned about the valuation of their houses (which can be driven down by other people's racist prejudices, even if current villagers do not share that prejudice).
But having such a site in the vicinity could not reasonably be equated to damnation for any village. Having your village flooded by a reservoir (in the way the Chinese are flooding villages by building the Three Gorges dam), or fall into the sea due to cliff erosion, might come closer to something that could be equated to damnation (I will leave it to those who subscribe to orthodox religious ideas of damnation to judge whether there is an equivalence in such circumstances).
It is hard to see what reason you may have had for the hyperbolic choice of headline, beyond pandering to the racist prejudices that may cause house prices in the village to drop rather more than the general drop in prices that all home owners are facing.
Indeed I can't help feeling that such headlines are likely to have a greater adverse effect on house prices than the reality of a site would.
A drop in house prices may be undesirable for current homeowners in the village, but surely it does not equate to damnation (especially when high house prices forcing young people out of villages itself is such a problem).
Similarly, if it does come to pass that there are other undesirable effects on the village (as some doubtless fear), current residents may choose to move away, but the village will not be left deserted - others will move in, and the effect on the village will be rather less than the 'damnation' of your headline.
Other villages have developments in the neighbourhood that have undesirable effects: Stewartby, Houghton Conquest and Millbrook are facing the potential impact of the fires and smoke of an incinerator in the vicinity, but you didn't equate their fate to 'damnation' when you reported that issue, even though the analogy would have been rather more apt.
Ben Foley
Spenser Road
Bedford
SIR - Reading your article "Village to be damned" in last week's BOS it appears that much has been going on in the background nothing of which has been revealed to the public.
Is this normal practice for the planners to treat the public with disdain and contempt?
Apparently 15 more gypsy sites are to be found, sobeware.
I wonder what other deals are being done behind closed doors. If this application is passed then it could set a precedent and villagers in every Parish in North Bedfordshire should take note that unbeknown to them plans for the next proposed site could already be well underway on their doorsteps.
Cliff Smith
Coplowe Lane, Thurleigh.
SIR - Gypsies and travellers have a right to suitable living places. But a poorly positioned and unsuitable site hard up against the gardens of the tiny village of Bletsoe can only satisfy the rights of Gypsies at the expense of the rights of the settled community.
It seems that Bletsoe is the subject of reverse discrimination! Bletsoe families have an absolute right to the peaceful enjoyment of their homes and family life if the application is approved this will be very seriously affected.
A responsible Borough Council should take this issue extremely seriously, and it saddens us that we, the villagers of Bletsoe, appear to be expendable in order to provide the officers concerned with 'a quick fix' for the Borough's quota of pitches.
Indeed, the Borough Council, as a public authority, will be acting unlawfully if it denies these Human Rights and natural justice not only for Bletsoe people but ALL the neighbouring Parish Councils who unanimously object to the proposal.
Nearly 3000 people can't be wrong! Applications for residential uses on this agricultural land have been consistently refused over the years: why approve this one which will hand 'Woody' a windfall in increased land values while knocking hundreds of thousands of pounds off the value of village properties?
There are more than 60 pensioners in Bletsoe who have worked hard all their lives to buy their houses, and wanted to spend their twilight years in tranquillity and safety - but will they be able to?
Only if the Members of the Planning Committee stick to the rules, and do not interfere with Bletsoe's rights to a fair deal!
Evelyn Baker
Old Way, Bletsoe
SIR - I refer to the article on the front page of your paper last Sunday concerning the proposed Gypsy Caravan Site at Bletsoe.
I am a village resident whose property backs onto the proposed site and chairman of the Parish Council. In my personal opinion consideration of this application to fulfil over 50 per cent of Bedford Borough Councils requirement to find 15 additional pitches for Gypsys and Travellers by 2011 is extremely premature.
I am pleased to note the commitment from a borough council spokesman to find appropriate sites through the planning system.
The development, control and plan making process requires a sequential search, which has not yet taken place, to find appropriate sites which must meet numerous criteria laid down in government guidelines. As the proposed site at Bletsoe meets none of these criteria I do not see how it could possibly be considered for approval at such an early stage in the planning process, or indeed at all.
M Grimes
The Avenue, Bletsoe
SIR - I don't think you're front page article in Beds on Sunday or on the website re gypsies is helpful. Councils have a legal duty to promote community cohesion between all racial groups and gypsies and Irish Travellers are covered as ethnic groups under the Race Relations Act.
Would you be saying for examplethat the village was damned if some Asian people wanted to live there? I don't think so.
My understanding is that newspapers should be reporting anything in the public interest.
Stirring up racial hatred is now unlawful and not in the public interest and I believe you should be doing more to report facts rather than using emotive language to stir up hatred towards a minority group who often have high levels of disability and low educational attainment because they are always being moved on.
They are subject to planning laws and regulations the same as anyone else but by perpetually encouraging and maintaining a solely negative view of gypsies and Travellers as all being bad is morally wrong and illegal.
Cathryn Varney
Bents Close
Clapham
SIR - I am a serving member of Bletsoe Parish Council and would like to voice my own personal opinion. I am against the proposal for the following reasons:
1. Lack of local amenities.There are no shops or post office in the village.
2. Unsafe access from the busy A6 to the proposed site.
3. No, as far am I am aware sequencial survey has been carried out to identify themost suitable locationsin our county for such sites.
Until this has happened I can't see how a decision can be made for the best interestsof all concerned
Councillor Cox.
SIR - It was a surprise to wake up last Sunday morning to discover that I live in a village to be damned!
I have lived in Bletsoe for 20+ years, brought up our children here and enjoyed a lifestyle which has been the envy of many friends who live elsewhere so it came as a shock to read such a headline!
On further reading your article I became more disturbed to learn that plans for our village were being made, unbeknown to us, almost a year ago! The impact of such a site on our very small village would be enormous and, though the initial plan may not seem to be very large, the possibilities of the site growing and being there for a very long time are considerable.
We live in a very close knit community and my concern would be for the wellbeing of this community already we have heard of property decreasing in value, which combined with the current drop in house prices is a concern for those whose life savings are tied up in their properties.
The impact of this site on the village would be a huge drain on our already stretched and few facilities. We have no bus service, no shop, no post office, no school and no doctor's surgery.
I would hope that the planners consider this application very carefully in the light of the enormous strength of feeling against it. Our village hall has never been so full and the village has never been so united on any issue before.
The planners can be assured that though Bletsoe is a small village it will put up a huge fight to preserve the village and indeed North Bedfordshire for the future of our children.
Ann Gibbons
Bletsoe Resident
SIR - When I read the headline "Village to be damned" I assumed a rocket strike was about to be unleashed upon the poor residents of Bletsoe or, at the very least, the entire village was about to be bulldozed.
I read on and discovered that Bletsoe 'might' provide a 'possible' 16 caravan pitches for Travellers. I've recently had the good fortune to work with Travellers and I am deeply saddened that your headline reflects the negative view of Travellers that seems endemic in our society. Like the people of Bletsoe, Travellers come in all shapes, sizes and shades.
Isn't it about time that we recognised the diversity of Travellers and their culture and said good-bye to this prejudice?
S Daniels,
Keeley Lane
Wootton
RELATED ARTICLE
Village to be damned
(article 257059 "Letters to the editor (February 17): Way of village life will be torn apart")
One trusts now the councillors will follow the format laid down by the Government via the East of England Regional Plan to identify sites according to necessary criteria.
Colin Deas
Bletsoe
SIR - I write to you following the front page article on Sunday 10th February 2008. I was very disturbed to read about the e-mails between John Copeland and David Bailey.
I would like to let you know my personal objections to the planning application. I live in Bletsoe and I am a parish councillor and I agree whole heartedly with the objections made in the article.
The site concerned backs onto our proposed Conservation Area and this would spoil the whole outlook. The values of all our properties would decrease significantly and this of course is a major concern with whom I have had contact.
The borough council has not fulfilled the Government criteria for finding suitable sites and seem to have looked at this one to fill more than half their requirement of 15 new pitches to 2011.
If planning was to be passed on this site it would be a travesty as none of the Government guidelines have been met by this proposed development.
Debbie Hall
Bourne End Lane
Bletsoe
SIR - Gypsies and travellers have a right to suitable living places. But a poorly positioned site hard up against the gardens of the tiny village of Bletsoe can only satisfy the rights of Gypsies at the expense of the rights of the settled community.
It seems that Bletsoe is the subject of reverse discrimination! Bletsoe families have the absolute right to the peaceful enjoyment of their homes and family life if the application is approved this will be very seriously affected. A responsible Borough Council should take this issue extremely seriously, and it saddens us that we, the villagers of Bletsoe, appear to be expendable in order to provide the officers concerned with 'a quick fix' for the Borough's quota of pitches.
Indeed, the Borough Council, as a public authority, will be acting unlawfully if it denies these Human Rights and natural justice not only for Bletsoe people but ALL the neighbouring Parish Councils who unanimously object to the proposal.
Nearly 3000 people can't be wrong! Applications for residential uses on this agricultural land have been consistently refused over the years: why approve this one which will hand 'Woody' a windfall in increased land values while knocking hundreds of thousands of pounds off the value of village properties?
There are more than 60 pensioners in Bletsoe who have worked hard all their lives to buy their houses, and wanted to spend their twilight years in tranquillity and safety - but will they be able to?
Only if the Members of the Planning Committee stick to the rules, and do not interfere with Bletsoe's rights to a fair deal!
Bletsoe resident
SIR - I was somewhat disappointed to read that Borough councillors had already been considering using our beautiful village to site a gypsy camp over a year ago in Feb 10th's BoS.
As a resident of the village I am really angry and upset that the council does not seem to have taken in to account our human rights. No one in this village wants the site as I am sure that the council is aware of on account of all the letters against it.
It concerns me that it will upset the balance of our wonderful community with the population explosion which the site will no doubt cause, not to mention that in my experience and that of another letter writer in last weeks BOS re the gypsies at ASDA, the eyesore and noise pollution. We do not have any facilities to support an increased population, ie no shop, school or bus service.
It will also affect the value of mine and other residents property prices as like it or not people will no longer want to move in to our village.
Do we not have a right to decide what happens to shape our village?
I ask the councillors who are making the decision on the planning permission, If it was their village, would they want the gypsy site next to their homes?
I think I know that the answer would be NO! Then where is our choice?
Jill Dainton
Bletsoe
SIR - I read your article, "Village to be damned", with more than usual care last Sunday.
As a member of a small village community, up against powerful bureaucrats, it is comforting to know that you are able to throw light on to what seems to be a rather murky alliance between the gypsies and the so called "planners".
"Planning" implies a logical thought process designed to arrive at the best solution to what is admittedly a difficult problem. What appears to be happening here is a plot designed to save the "planners" the trouble of doing any planning at all.
Jonathan Knights
Bletsoe
SIR - If any of you drive down the A6 towards Rushden and the eye catches the attractive 'Falcon Inn' on the left, you will miss the hamlet of Bletsoe as if it did not exist because it lays back from the road with one turning into it and the same road running through it.
The hamlet was mentioned in the Doomsday Book and was also the fifteenth century home of Lady Margaret Beaufort, the mother of Henry VII, now it is the home to less than 400 souls.
There are no shops, schools, buses and the only pub lays outside the hamlet's boarders. This historical part of Britain is suddenly under threat because Mr Thomas Allen, who is not even a resident of Bletsoe can see a way of making a quick buck, and Mr David Bailey , head of planning at Bedford Borough Council can see a quick way of solving a problem by dumping a gypsy site on the hamlet.
'Good Old Tommy Allen', he says as if they are old friends. Perhaps they are. Would Mr Bailey say 'Good Old Tommy' if he were a resident of Bletsoe?
The plan is to site sixteen pitches north of the village. An average family size of four would increase the population by almost 20 per cent at a stroke and the new residents would not be the romantic gypsies of D H Lawrence's novels.
One has to ask the question, 'why is the council even considering placing gypsies at a site designated as a conservation area, with no facilities and placed so close to a dangerous major road, and where the gypsies collectively could pose a great threat to the local residents?'
Unless it solves a problem for the council. Beds on Sunday reported that there are 2000 signatures on the petition complaining about this, which means that if every man, woman and child in Bletsoe signed it, then over 1600 others from surrounding villages have supported them.
The one voice that seems to be absent from all this is the voice of Mr Alistair Burt, the MP for North East Bedfordshire. He has been ominously absent from any meeting held because it is reported he is busy furthering his ambitions with his new job following his promotion.
Well, Mr Burt, if your ambition is to be chauffeured around in a ministerial car following the next General Election, you must first be returned to office and 2000 signatories will be looking very closely at your input into this very sorry affair.
George Bernard,
Grosvenor Crescent Mews, London
SIR - I was heartened to read your report 'Village to be Damned' this week and to see there is some support for our little village (population 130).
We in Bletsoe are thoroughly disheartened to think that a Planning Department/Committee has the power to destroy our lives with such an arbitrary decision.
While gypsies and travellers have human rights we in the settled community do too! All too often these days the rights of the law abiding majority are completely overlooked in favour of 'minority groups' such as for example gypsies.
The land in question has been refused planning permission on a number of occasions in the past for single residential purposes by previous owners.
Why then should it be considered suitable now for multiple occupancy by gypsies?
For the majority of us the only investment we have is in our homes.
This application, if it goes ahead, will reduce the value of all homes in the village by at least 50 per cent (if we are able to sell them at all) with no prospect of compensation from Bedford Borough Council.
Mr Allen on the other hand will make a significant return on his investment and a very respectable annual income from this site.
130 lives and investments ruined for the sake of the human rights of a minority group. Tell me, where are our human rights? Is that fair?
A Field-Foster
The Old Rectory
Bletsoe
SIR - With reference to the article in last Sunday's newspaper in respect of the proposed gypsy development in Bletsoe, the additional two fields that are mentioned as being owned by Mr Allen are in fact all adjacent to each other.
Therefore, the site would be created as one development that sprawls into the other two fields both of which are adjacent to residential properties not creating the peaceful haven that you are led to believe. If the application is passed, based on the fact that it doesn't meet any of the Governement's criteria, then this would be an absolute travesty and it would potentially hide the fact that the Borough Council appears to have done no other investigation to find significantly more suitable sites.
Chris Hall
Bourne End Lane, Bletsoe
SIR - I must express my dismay at your front page headline, which appears to me to have a racist dimension.
I would not be surprised if residents of Bletsoe do not wish to have a caravan site for travellers in their neighbourhood.
Of course many are concerned about the valuation of their houses (which can be driven down by other people's racist prejudices, even if current villagers do not share that prejudice).
But having such a site in the vicinity could not reasonably be equated to damnation for any village. Having your village flooded by a reservoir (in the way the Chinese are flooding villages by building the Three Gorges dam), or fall into the sea due to cliff erosion, might come closer to something that could be equated to damnation (I will leave it to those who subscribe to orthodox religious ideas of damnation to judge whether there is an equivalence in such circumstances).
It is hard to see what reason you may have had for the hyperbolic choice of headline, beyond pandering to the racist prejudices that may cause house prices in the village to drop rather more than the general drop in prices that all home owners are facing.
Indeed I can't help feeling that such headlines are likely to have a greater adverse effect on house prices than the reality of a site would.
A drop in house prices may be undesirable for current homeowners in the village, but surely it does not equate to damnation (especially when high house prices forcing young people out of villages itself is such a problem).
Similarly, if it does come to pass that there are other undesirable effects on the village (as some doubtless fear), current residents may choose to move away, but the village will not be left deserted - others will move in, and the effect on the village will be rather less than the 'damnation' of your headline.
Other villages have developments in the neighbourhood that have undesirable effects: Stewartby, Houghton Conquest and Millbrook are facing the potential impact of the fires and smoke of an incinerator in the vicinity, but you didn't equate their fate to 'damnation' when you reported that issue, even though the analogy would have been rather more apt.
Ben Foley
Spenser Road
Bedford
SIR - Reading your article "Village to be damned" in last week's BOS it appears that much has been going on in the background nothing of which has been revealed to the public.
Is this normal practice for the planners to treat the public with disdain and contempt?
Apparently 15 more gypsy sites are to be found, sobeware.
I wonder what other deals are being done behind closed doors. If this application is passed then it could set a precedent and villagers in every Parish in North Bedfordshire should take note that unbeknown to them plans for the next proposed site could already be well underway on their doorsteps.
Cliff Smith
Coplowe Lane, Thurleigh.
SIR - Gypsies and travellers have a right to suitable living places. But a poorly positioned and unsuitable site hard up against the gardens of the tiny village of Bletsoe can only satisfy the rights of Gypsies at the expense of the rights of the settled community.
It seems that Bletsoe is the subject of reverse discrimination! Bletsoe families have an absolute right to the peaceful enjoyment of their homes and family life if the application is approved this will be very seriously affected.
A responsible Borough Council should take this issue extremely seriously, and it saddens us that we, the villagers of Bletsoe, appear to be expendable in order to provide the officers concerned with 'a quick fix' for the Borough's quota of pitches.
Indeed, the Borough Council, as a public authority, will be acting unlawfully if it denies these Human Rights and natural justice not only for Bletsoe people but ALL the neighbouring Parish Councils who unanimously object to the proposal.
Nearly 3000 people can't be wrong! Applications for residential uses on this agricultural land have been consistently refused over the years: why approve this one which will hand 'Woody' a windfall in increased land values while knocking hundreds of thousands of pounds off the value of village properties?
There are more than 60 pensioners in Bletsoe who have worked hard all their lives to buy their houses, and wanted to spend their twilight years in tranquillity and safety - but will they be able to?
Only if the Members of the Planning Committee stick to the rules, and do not interfere with Bletsoe's rights to a fair deal!
Evelyn Baker
Old Way, Bletsoe
SIR - I refer to the article on the front page of your paper last Sunday concerning the proposed Gypsy Caravan Site at Bletsoe.
I am a village resident whose property backs onto the proposed site and chairman of the Parish Council. In my personal opinion consideration of this application to fulfil over 50 per cent of Bedford Borough Councils requirement to find 15 additional pitches for Gypsys and Travellers by 2011 is extremely premature.
I am pleased to note the commitment from a borough council spokesman to find appropriate sites through the planning system.
The development, control and plan making process requires a sequential search, which has not yet taken place, to find appropriate sites which must meet numerous criteria laid down in government guidelines. As the proposed site at Bletsoe meets none of these criteria I do not see how it could possibly be considered for approval at such an early stage in the planning process, or indeed at all.
M Grimes
The Avenue, Bletsoe
SIR - I don't think you're front page article in Beds on Sunday or on the website re gypsies is helpful. Councils have a legal duty to promote community cohesion between all racial groups and gypsies and Irish Travellers are covered as ethnic groups under the Race Relations Act.
Would you be saying for examplethat the village was damned if some Asian people wanted to live there? I don't think so.
My understanding is that newspapers should be reporting anything in the public interest.
Stirring up racial hatred is now unlawful and not in the public interest and I believe you should be doing more to report facts rather than using emotive language to stir up hatred towards a minority group who often have high levels of disability and low educational attainment because they are always being moved on.
They are subject to planning laws and regulations the same as anyone else but by perpetually encouraging and maintaining a solely negative view of gypsies and Travellers as all being bad is morally wrong and illegal.
Cathryn Varney
Bents Close
Clapham
SIR - I am a serving member of Bletsoe Parish Council and would like to voice my own personal opinion. I am against the proposal for the following reasons:
1. Lack of local amenities.There are no shops or post office in the village.
2. Unsafe access from the busy A6 to the proposed site.
3. No, as far am I am aware sequencial survey has been carried out to identify themost suitable locationsin our county for such sites.
Until this has happened I can't see how a decision can be made for the best interestsof all concerned
Councillor Cox.
SIR - It was a surprise to wake up last Sunday morning to discover that I live in a village to be damned!
I have lived in Bletsoe for 20+ years, brought up our children here and enjoyed a lifestyle which has been the envy of many friends who live elsewhere so it came as a shock to read such a headline!
On further reading your article I became more disturbed to learn that plans for our village were being made, unbeknown to us, almost a year ago! The impact of such a site on our very small village would be enormous and, though the initial plan may not seem to be very large, the possibilities of the site growing and being there for a very long time are considerable.
We live in a very close knit community and my concern would be for the wellbeing of this community already we have heard of property decreasing in value, which combined with the current drop in house prices is a concern for those whose life savings are tied up in their properties.
The impact of this site on the village would be a huge drain on our already stretched and few facilities. We have no bus service, no shop, no post office, no school and no doctor's surgery.
I would hope that the planners consider this application very carefully in the light of the enormous strength of feeling against it. Our village hall has never been so full and the village has never been so united on any issue before.
The planners can be assured that though Bletsoe is a small village it will put up a huge fight to preserve the village and indeed North Bedfordshire for the future of our children.
Ann Gibbons
Bletsoe Resident
SIR - When I read the headline "Village to be damned" I assumed a rocket strike was about to be unleashed upon the poor residents of Bletsoe or, at the very least, the entire village was about to be bulldozed.
I read on and discovered that Bletsoe 'might' provide a 'possible' 16 caravan pitches for Travellers. I've recently had the good fortune to work with Travellers and I am deeply saddened that your headline reflects the negative view of Travellers that seems endemic in our society. Like the people of Bletsoe, Travellers come in all shapes, sizes and shades.
Isn't it about time that we recognised the diversity of Travellers and their culture and said good-bye to this prejudice?
S Daniels,
Keeley Lane
Wootton
RELATED ARTICLE
Village to be damned
(article 257059 "Letters to the editor (February 17): Way of village life will be torn apart")
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