MADAM — Yet again, Neil Carmichael peddles the falsehood that an adopted local plan will prevent unwanted development and create utopias where locals decide on what is built in their backyard.

If Neil is so sure of this oft repeated statement, I wonder why he has not responded to the letter I sent him in May identifying a number of councils that have an adopted local plan but have lost appeals against developments similar to Mankley and Baxter’s Fields recently.

There are many examples out there.

I think the reason is that Neil knows it is not the adoption of a local plan that has most significance in planning decision making at present, it is the National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF).

This document is so poorly thought out and badly written that it lacks sufficient definition on key points, such as “What defines a sustainable development?” to allow locals to object to plans for their area.

Power, far from being handed back to locals, has been transferred to the Planning Inspectorate, which determine appeals.

Witness the current farcical situation in which our council is spending up to £100,000 of our money fighting at two judicial reviews to get judgements on how landscape impacts should be considered in applications. And all because the NPPF is so full of holes you could strain your peas through it.

I think it is about time that our MP held up his hands and admitted that the guidance is not working as intended and apologise to his constituents for the strains it is putting on our local services.

It is the least he could do in the last few months of his incumbency.

When he swans off to some highly paid directorships that inevitably will be offered to an ex-MP, we will be left living with the wreckage that his planning policy has created.

Richard Hillary

Leonard Stanley