I would like to expand on my letter of a couple of weeks ago regarding the huge development planned for the greenfield site behind Focus and the Fleet Support building on the A4 in Chippenham.

Thanks are due to those who have contacted me but I believe some have mistaken the site at issue.

This is not the proposed retail development behind Herman Miller but far, far bigger.

It is all the green land south of the A4 to the railway line and lies between the old A350 Saltersford Lane and the new A350.

Only one field on the top of the hill is to remain green.

I concentrated on traffic issues in my earlier correspondence because I feel this is how most people will be affected in the Cepen Park South and Bath Road areas. Access to the site will be off the Focus roundabout.

Among the letters I received was an anonymous attack on me by a Gazette reader.

They said I was anti-employment in North Wiltshire and should be ashamed this is unfair and since the writer didn't have the courage of their convictions to put an address or name on their letter I can only reply via the columns of the paper.

Unemployment in the whole of North Wiltshire is less than two per cent and the forecast increase in workers between now and 2011 is less than 1,000.

This one site alone will employ more than 700 people, based on the county council's own projections.

Why should all the provision for the whole district be put on one site on the west of the town, especially when there is a vast amount of empty buildings already in Chippenham and little employment land to the east?

This will mean thousands of extra vehicles, lorries as well, trundling along the A4 every day.

This site is actually part of the ancient Corsham Court estate, not Chippenham at all.

Are people in Corsham happy about their parish being eroded because Chippenham wants more unnecessary employment land and industrial buildings?

This is a new plan included in the draft local plan for North Wiltshire which will come into force unless we, the public, can defeat it.

Employment and distribution centres have never been proposed for this site before.

I said I would be accused of nimbyism and I will lay my cards on the table it will blight my house and my neighbours' homes because the development will rise up the hill directly across the lane from my house.

These fields and the copse which will be erased are beautiful. There is an ancient field system, deer raise their young on this land, orchids grow in the woods, there is a nest of kestrel chicks bordering the lane, there are colonies of slow worms.

This week a duckling walked along the hedgerow past my kitchen window. All this will be destroyed.

There are brownfield sites that can be used for employment and warehousing so why erase the last piece of green land inside the bypass?

I think the people of Chippenham and Corsham should have the right to enjoy this land.

K Martin

Chippenham