PAUL Waite of the Harvington Says No campaign should perhaps request a copy of the full text of my comments rather than the edited highlights that appeared in the Journal, where I pointed out that the unofficial moratorium on all housebuilding outside village boundaries will, in the wider context, be hugely damaging for the local and regional economy and will effectively stop the supply of new market and affordable housing, just at the point when the national economy is starting to recover.

The fact that our scheme has been withdrawn will mean that no affordable housing of any meaningful quantity will be built in the village, and none of the financial benefits (amounting to many hundreds of thousands of pounds) that would have accrued to the village as a result of this development will come forward.

Predominantly these contributions would have assisted the younger generation, allowing families to move into the village, bolstering numbers in the local school, which currently takes in children from outside the community to fill the available places.

Rather than take aim at small local developers with a track record of top quality design (Mr Waite and other leading lights in the HSN campaign ironically live in houses I have designed and built) he should perhaps look over the fence at the bottom of his own backyard, where a much larger housing scheme is quietly slipping under the radar.

Steve Taylor

Owner/Managing Director

Howland UK