King Harry plans

SIR - Regarding the article and editorial on the King Harry Lane Playing Fields Appeal (Herts Advertiser, 18 February) I have now been notified that the appeal hearing over the most recent plan to build on the King Harry Lane Playing Fields will be held in Committee Room One at the Council Offices on March 11 at 10am. And the inspector may exercise his discretion and let me speak at the meeting.

At the last planning meeting (September 21 last year) the one thing all the councillors who voted agreed on was that planning permission should not be granted and that �1.6 million should not be merely handed over to the Local Highways Authority by the developer with no strings attached, no obligation to provide a viable solution to the besetting traffic problem at the King Harry Lane.

The developers themselves (I quote from page 44 of the officers' report ) "accepted that off-site improvements to alleviate traffic problems at the junction would be critical in determining whether development at this site would be acceptable".

But now in their Grounds of Appeal statement, the developer blithely asserts that "a mitigation package has been agreed with the local highways authority to deal with the impact of the proposed development at the King Harry Lane junction and it has been accepted by officers of the district council in their report to the committee September 21, 2009". ( We will disregard the fact that the developers then back up this statement with a "quote" from the report which in fact exists nowhere in the report.)

What the developers do not say is that this acceptance of the �1.6million by the officers was specifically rejected by the councillors at the planning meeting of September 21 and this decision to reject is reasserted in your article today by the council portfolio holder Chris Brazier.

BARRIE MORT

Chairman, Verulam Residents Association