WESTBURY Town Council has now voted narrowly not to object to the county council's bypass planning application, with six councillors being prevented from taking part.

Surely on a matter as controversial and divisive as this it is essential that all councillors' views are heard. This vote makes a mockery of local democracy as large sections of the town that are affected by the new route were not represented at this meeting.

Why is the county council pursuing this application now? If after their application last year they had been granted funding then whether you were in favour or against the route you could not have argued against their right to take this step. As they were not granted funding, and may never be, to spend more is gambling with taxpayers' money. If they fail to gain funding at a future date then all the costs incurred in this application will be wasted.

The county council's proposed bypass remains unlikely to be built for years, if ever. Meanwhile, little is being done to re-route the unsuitable traffic from which people in the town are suffering. We ought to be uniting behind affordable ways of traffic relief for the town and for the A350 villages that the county councillors seem to neglect.

T FROST

Chalford

FOR nearly half a century I have regularly walked over Bratton Castle and the White Horse Hill the most significant icon for this entire area and I frequently visit Wellhead Drove and Valley, appreciating the scenery, the history and the enormously varied wildlife of this region.

When the idea for an eastern bypass for Westbury was originally aired, I could not believe that such a ridiculous proposal could seriously be considered.

With full justification, much of this area is termed a Special Landscape Area, dominated as it is by the spectacular western scarp of Salisbury Plain. White Horse Hill is highly visible from a great distance, and provides almost 360 degrees of outstanding and far-reaching views for vast numbers of visitors, uninterrupted other than by the regrettable cement works. This road would be an even more appalling scar upon this landscape. More secluded, but exquisitely beautiful, the Wellhead Valley provides an increasingly rare refuge for many protected but already diminishing wildlife species, and an equally rare opportunity for visitors to enjoy a traffic-free environment on the fringe of an increasingly urbanised district. This road would utterly violate this haven.

I understand that the majority of Westbury people themselves do not favour this proposal, nor do the DoE, our local MP or the Government! A far less expensive and far less destructive western option provides a far better link with the industrial estates and the railway station, and can surely be the only sane route, unless there are factors which the county council is concealing.

Has the environmental vandalism created by the Batheaston bypass not served to draw a line under any further regrettable desecration of the sensitive countryside in this region?

D FC MAUNDER

Semington