Published at 09:05, Monday, 02 July 2012

WHOSE interests are really being served by Northumberland County Council’s recent majority endorsement of the Duke of Northumberland’s five-year quest to expand his business portfolio with a town development scheme in Prudhoe?

Certainly not those of the poor and homeless of Prudhoe, whose hopes and prospects for a better quality of life and future, have been summarily dashed by a 30 per cent reduction in affordable homes to be built.

What of the major concerns of those who live below the proposed supermarket site, who are now threatened by even greater flooding?

And what about the interests of those facing the permanent and hideous disfigurement of their home environments, by the proposed erection of a monstrous, prison-like wall structure, euphemistically labelled a noise barrier, and spuriously purported to protect residents from the inescapable and unpreventable hazards of 24/7 vehicle noise and pollution?

It appears that, once again, the interests of Prudhoe citizens have been seriously compromised by the abject failure of county council planners to address the anomalies in the planning application, and their contemptuous dismissal of anxious concerns and objections.

The council’s submission has successfully deployed vacuous and convoluted rhetoric to conceal these disturbing weaknesses, and persuade adjudicators of its shallow merits.

It is a submission that, in essence, is merely a charter for satisfying the thwarted financial aspirations of privileged landed interests, at the expense of the disadvantaged – property and profit before the poor.

PETER GALLAGHER,

By email

Published by http://www.hexhamcourant.co.uk