AT LAST an iconic building for Stroud – planning application no. S.15/0834/OUT.

Who do we thank for such a brilliant, innovative, artistic and creative idea as to build a three-storey block of flats with parking spaces adjacent to the A46 and on the edge of the Cotswold AONB escarpment?

This proposed building is located at the main gateway into the town from Gloucester, Cheltenham and the north.

Visitors to our historic Cotswold town will be really impressed.

Now, putting joking (and a little sarcasm) aside, residents of Stroud and the SDC, please do not allow this to happen.

This building, together with about around seventy other dwellings will be a blot on the landscape and will lead the way for development into the adjacent fields along Painswick Old Road, across to Callowell and into the Painswick Valley.

The National Planning Policy Framework states that building on Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty will only be allowed in exceptional circumstances.

There are none.

Development will be outside of the Town Settlement Boundary and development should take place on the many brownfield sites in the area.

Many of these sites have been empty for years.

There have also been thousands (at the last count) of planning permissions granted, and the dwellings have not been built.

Peghouse and Fox’s Field are already under tarmac and concrete and have been lost forever.

Mankley Field will be next and Wades Farm, Baxters Field, Rodborough, the Besbury (Minchinhampton) site and now Grange Fields will go the same way if people do not resist.

The other concerns are about the increase in traffic and pollution that this development will cause around the A46.

The government is already going to be fined by the Eurocrats because our pollution levels are too high.

There are few school places and very little employment within walking distance of the site, so people will either use public transport or their own vehicles.

Bryan and Diana Goodall

Stroud