WHETHER Mr Baldy's motive for deciding not to go ahead with the building of 14 houses on the factory site in Broughton Gifford is altruism towards the village residents or financial I do not know.

I have recently become acquainted with the facts of the government's Affordable Housing Policy. Unless one encounters this policy personally the ramifications tend to pass unnoticed.

No one would disagree with the fact that there is a local need for housing for the less well off and that everyone deserves a proper home and a place where they can feel secure. Pressure from authority to build more homes at the lower end of the market can only be a good thing. However, as the rules stand at present they can only be a deterrent towards this end as Mr Baldy's case shows.

Consider this. A developer wishing to build, say 14 houses, must ensure that a proportion (in west Wiltshire it is 50 per cent) fit the affordable housing criteria. The next move, one would expect, is for the council to purchase that 50 per cent at a fair market price for use as they see fit. Wrong! The developer is expected to 'contribute' (i.e. give) that 50 per cent (seven houses out of 14) to the council. The rule applies across the board build two houses on a piece of spare land and give one away. I know of two other cases where plans to build have been abandoned as not being financially viable.

What developer, large or small, is going to invest money, time and effort into a project which barely breaks even or maybe would produce a loss?

People I have spoken to have found the foregoing hard to believe and communist policies have been mentioned more than once. Does this mean that because some people do not have a car anyone with two should 'contribute' one of theirs?

MR G SUTTON

Chapmanslade

MR Baldy's view is just proof of what kind of people are eroding village life. Born and spending much of my life in West Ashton I came back over two years ago to escape town living, renting here as a temporary measure. Yes, it is beautiful as far as being in the country etc, but the road through is more like Brands Hatch, no one has even tried enforcing the 30mph limit while we have been here.

The only homes built since we came back cost over half a million pounds. No affordable housing has been built here since I was 12, over 55 years ago.

My parents were tenants, very Christian, and pillars of the community, my father I know hated what was happening here. We had a thriving church, three services on Sundays and a four-class Sunday school. Now it struggles to survive. Yes, the school goes on, but not full of village children, the majority driven here from all over the place.

It is a far cry from the true village of my childhood and if I had half a million I would not buy here.

So I suggest Mr Baldy you go American and build yourself a gated community, after all electric gates are the latest 'must have', then you will not have to suffer us lesser souls.

MRS R ARMITAGE

West Ashton