WE refer to Dr Nielson's letter (May 15). We agree with Dr Nielson's assertion that new development can carry with it various potential advantages, including an increased demand for local services (such as schools, hospitals, GP surgeries etc); an increased demand that can under some, but not all, circumstances sustain these important community facilities. We also recognise that new development can play an important role in the provision of affordable housing for local people. However, our concern is that where new development is out of scale with the size of existing settlements, then certain key elements of local infrastructure will simply never be able to cope. Okehampton is just such a case with potential development plans foreseeing an additional 1,400 houses on top of a current town size of around 2,900 properties. This represents a potential growth of 50% in the size of our town. One example of the infrastructure that will never be able to cope with this growth is the existing road network; the roads in the town centre will not be able to be widened (throughout their length) in order to accommodate the significant increase in traffic that will result from this scale of expansion. Likewise, it is hard to see how town centre parking will ever be able to be expanded to meet the increase in demand. As a group we are not against development per se. However, we do firmly believe that it should be sustainable in terms of its impact on the local community and the quality of life of those who live here. The Okehampton Sustainable Development Group
