I NOTE from Anthony Penn's letter concerning the proposed Tesco development (Advertiser, September 15) that the planning committee has to rely on the county highway authority for advice on the possibility of traffic congestion.

This may be true, but it still doesn't explain why at the last public meeting when the council turned the proposal down, Mr Penn spoke at great length in favour of the development without once mentioning traffic or the bridge.

If members of the listening public had been allowed to have their say there would have been uproar.

From the very beginning of this wretched proposal when the community hall was packed to overflowing with angry townsfolk, I set out to establish which authority had decided that: “At the present time the bridge can accommodate the traffic associated with this development.”

It was obvious to everyone that Tesco would never have considered building a class A1 food store unless it could attract hundreds of new shoppers from surrounding areas, and also that some authority had reassured them about possible traffic congestion.

Assuming that the highway authority in Worcester was the most likely culprit I wrote explaining the local concerns and demanded to know who had assessed that traffic congestion would not be a problem.

The reply I received from the man who admits responsibility, Mr B G Sharp, totally missed the point and simply outlined in detail all the current proposals to renovate the Bridge's infrastructure.

I wrote back to remind him that my letter had dealt exclusively with congestion issues and not once had I mentioned the infrastructure.

Two months later I received an apology plus a three-page summary which included the statement that “there is no evidence to show that traffic chaos will prevail”.

There is little point in my explaining the summary in detail except to say that nowhere was there any hint that the highway authority was concerned about traffic congestion.

Not surprisingly my letter in reply has yet to receive a response.

Finally may I return to a previous letter when I asked members of the planning committee to explain why they were forced to cite design as their reason for refusing the application and not highways and/or the economic impact on the town.

The public have a right to know the answer but not surprisingly my letter had yet to receive a response.

NORMAN WANSTALL,

Burford.