SWINDON Council is worried that the Front Garden development may not be ready in time to meet the government's targets for the building of 10,000 new houses over the next seven years, so it wants another greenfield site to cover in concrete.

Do councillors honestly expect us to believe this when the Northern Development has still to be completed, the Front Garden is all but signed and sealed and so is Earlsgate, east of the A419. Now they want the last piece of countryside left between Coate Water and the Great Western Hospital.

We were told that the hospital would not open up the floodgates to developers. Day House Lane and the surrounding countryside has always been a place where families can walk, people can ride their bikes and observe nature.

I would like to ask Lisa Hawkes, chairman of the planning committee, how allowing the development of our countryside will improve the quality of life for the people who live here?

More houses means more cars and more traffic chaos.

We need to reduce the pollution of carbon dioxide and its effect on global warming, not add to the problem.

We all have the right to live where we want but shouldn't be driven away by a council hell bent on choking us to death. The knock-on effect is more demand on the Great Western Hospital, which is too small to cope with the population of Swindon as it is.

Then there's the problem of water, or the lack of it. Thames Water has stated that the demand is already greater than supply.

Perhaps instead of houses the council should be thinking of using our fields as a reservoir .

Please, everyone, object to this.

S MATTHEWS

Swindon