MADAM I was appalled to learn that planning permission is being sought to build several hundred houses at Hildersley.

Having spent my formative years there, in what is a quintessentially rural environment, I can see that it may not be many years before, what is becoming an unsightly urban sprawl, even subsumes Weston under Penyard.

True, people have to live somewhere, but why not build flats and terraced housing and fill brown field sites? Also compulsorily take over the many empty houses there are in the country.

Land is not infinite and the human race has to learn to preserve it. At the present rate of progress I cannot envisage what Ross will look like 100 years from now. By then of course it will be too late. The environment will be utterly defiled, wild life further decimated and a virtual concrete jungle established. Is this what we really want?

Stephen Constance.