I read, with interest, the front page article in the Budleigh Journal, stating that the “Allotment site could be saved”. I trust that the consideration of other sites is a serious one and is not just being offered as a sop to those of us who are protesting about the plan to build on the allotment site in Greenway Lane.

While I fully support the need for affordable housing in Budleigh, Greenway Lane is totally the wrong site for several reasons.

It is unfair on the allotment holders who, in some instances, have been working their plots for over 30 years, to be told that they must relinquish them and start again on stony and, as I understand it, fairly unworkable ground behind the current allotments. If Clinton Devon Estates were to use the Greenway Lane site (which I hope they will not), why can they not build the new houses on the rough land at the back and leave the allotments alone?

However, my main objection to this particular site is the problems we, as local residents, have with parking.

I live in one of the roads leading up to Greenway Lane and, over the years, parking has become an enormous problem as many families in the houses have at least two vehicles and, in some instances, five!

I accept that, when the houses were built, there were not many cars around, but it is a different world now and the situation can only get more and more difficult as children grow up and get cars of their own.

I have been advised that the 50-plus new houses will have just one parking space allotted to each house. As stated above, the majority of families now have two, or more, vehicles. Where is it anticipated the second vehicles, of which there could potentially be another 50, would park?

Added to this, with potentially another 100 vehicles entering and leaving the proposed housing estate, this would make the area even more congested and hazardous.

Also, how many homes is it proposed would be affordable and would they be purely for local people? We do not need any more homes to be built that will be snapped up by second-home owners, as happened on the Normans’ site.

We need homes for local people that can be afforded by local people.

DIANE NICHOLLS

35 Armytage Road, Budleigh Salterton.