Sir – May I congratulate the panel who came to Friday’s meeting at the Civic Hall in Wantage. I thought Ed Vaizey, Matthew Barber and, in particular, Julie Mabberley spoke admirably and the whole evening was well informed and constructive.

On refection, however, I think one major point was missed. Everyone agreed on the problems raised by the proposed developments — increased traffic, lack of schools, flooding and so forth — and various remedies or palliatives were put forward In spite of that, however, I think we all missed the elephant in the corner: the Local Plan itself.

This lays down the number of houses to be built in the Vale and the county, and the rate at which they are to be built. These lead to most of the problems we are faced with today.

The Local Plan has been foisted upon us by government. We — the people living here and affected by the resulting difficulties — have had no say in the matter.

When the proposals are put out to public consultation, no consideration is given as to whether or not these houses should be built at all — the points we are allowed to raise are minor adjustments which might reduce the damage that is going to be done.

The opinion of the people most affected by the plan itself has neither been sought nor are our objections being considered; as far as we can tell no effort has been made to get the total figures changed. Before the last election, I wrote to Mr Vaizey about the way local opinion is being increasingly ignored. He replied in effect: Wait and see what we do if we win. We waited — and now under the present government even more weight is given to the developers and less to us.

Dick Brown, Wantage