November 25 was an extremely sad day in the history of Swindon. Yet another area of Swindon's green and pleasant countryside has been lost to the developers at the expense of our quality of life.

Many people, including my wife and I, enjoy walks in that area and to enjoy the wildlife which includes not only an abundance of butterflies in summer, but also badgers, foxes, and deer.

It is also a totally wrong place to build, as recently proved by the flooding which was reported recently in the Advertiser.

Sometime in the future Swindon will have a community of residents having to evacuate their homes due to flooding, and keeping insurance companies busy. Alas this will not worry Sue Bates, Derek Benfield and their other Labour colleagues who have £ signs in their eyes, and who have turned their noses up at public opinion for a long time over this issue.

Since we have a lot of waste land in areas like the Churchward site I would seriously question the need to build on any greenfield site.

Peter Bates

Belsay

Toothill

Swindon