I WRITE concerning the planning application submitted by Archihaus to build 150 homes in Kingstone.

As of May 1 there had been 195 comments made – 114 were objections, 79 were in support and two were general comments.

Of those who have supported the application only five of these actually live in the village and a few of these were from places as far afield as London, Salisbury and Norfolk. I think it unlikely that many of those supporting the application have ever visited the village. And many of those supporting the application have just supported it and not given any reason or explanation, while most of those who have objected have gone to great lengths to give valid reasons and explanations for their objections.

A number people representing groups have supported the application, such as Kingstone High School governors, Hereford Civic Society and Herefordshire Council housing needs and development team, yet none of these have shown evidence that they can speak for these groups as a whole which is totally unacceptable.

Those people who have supported the application may like the sound of this type of Passivhaus development but the size of the development cannot be classed as eco-friendly which is what most people would think Passivhaus is all about. All this development will create is a village within the village. This sort of Passivhaus development is more suited to smaller developments on brownfield sites.

The planned site is a green field site, again not eco-friendly; to be taking good farming land out of production to build such a large concentration of homes is unacceptable.

I hope the council will take into account the views of the villagers when considering this application as when you look at those who supported the application who actually live in the village it equates to only 6.3 per cent of those who support the development.

Surely the views of the villagers should carry the greatest weight when deciding upon an application.

I would also like to point out that there have been some issues with letters of objection not being put on the council website, this has been chased with Herefordshire Council but as yet these missing letters have still not appeared on the site.

Also as I read in the Hereford Times recently both the local MPs are supporting the eastern link road, so the proposed building of such a large concentration of homes in the west of the county does not seem to make sense. If you have an eastern link road surely any new homes should be built with good access to the link road?

I think the council should also take account of the unacceptable traffic chaos this will cause. As anyone who has to travel into Hereford from Kingstone, or any point south of the river, at rush hour will know it can take over an hour to travel a distance that should only take 20 minutes.

Adding more traffic will make this horrendous. Currently the journey into Hereford from Kingstone is a matter of dodging the potholes and adding more traffic will also make the road condition much worse.

With Herefordshire Council having to make savings, how does it think it is going to be able to provide maintenance support for such a development? There are a lot of paths and ditches etc on the site which will have to be maintained by someone. Will this be the council?

If Herefordshire Council passes this application it will be doing a great disservice to the residents of Kingstone and the surrounding areas. To totally disregard the views of those who have to live with such a large development is unacceptable. Any development of this size is not suitable for any village, let alone Kingstone.

ANDREW AND CAROL MANNING, Whitehouse Drive, Kingstone.