Sir,

I am writing to comment on a meeting I was able to attend last Thursday organised by Phil Baker, who invited two speakers from the Pembrokeshire Coast National Parks Authority along to discuss the proposed replacement Deposit Local Development Plan, which is basically new housing developments both outside and within the current Saundersfoot boundary with local residents.

The proposal to develop approximately 170 new houses around the village to include both social and private is quite a task for any local authority to tackle, but seems to be happening without the knowledge of the majority of residents and definitely without them realising the impact it will have on the doctors surgery, school and basic amenities such as roads and parking.

The timescale given as a cut-off date on Friday, June 1, at 4.30 pm, seems a very short space of allocated time for residents to first find out about the plans which will affect everyone and not just those who surround the building plots. I have no real issue about housing being developed or to include social housing, as long as the social housing is actually built, which in the past has proved very difficult.

However, I would think that if the local council and PCNPA came to the villagers of Saundersfoot and suggested that they were going to improve the access road into the village and make it safer to accommodate more people driving in and out, including footpaths along from the station, with a plan to increase the size and funding of the doctors surgery, who I currently think do an excellent job in already stressed circumstances and budgets.

Improved parking at the doctors would be a big benefit, especially if it is to take on the 2,000 new customers it apparently has stated it could currently accept within its boundaries, but I look forward to the 7.30 am appointment queue moving to 6.30 am with dismay.

It was also suggested that the local school could accept another class in its current state, but that was only a possibility, and anyone living on the boundaries of the village now would surely be having to locate their children in a school further out.

Why not construct a plan to increase or move the current school, with ample parking to alleviate the current unsafe practice of parents having to park illegally and dangerously on any double yellow lines - including opposite the police station or on the grass verge - that seem fit to unload the kids and walk them into or out of school twice a day.

This practice is well-known by the school, the police and local council, who seem to accept that it cannot sort the potential life-endangering problem, but lets more cars and more kids into the school and hope nothing happens or that parents will just find new ways to park, and it will not be their problem then.

The practice and thoughts that many of the new houses would become second or holidays homes was also accepted by the PCNPA as a real possibility and will benefit just a few, but it cannot be stopped happening. There will, though, be a real benefit to council budgets when it attains its extra cash via the second home tax, as Tenby seems be enjoying at the moment.

It was also raised that the housing was outside the current Saundersfoot boundary, but I never realised until the meeting was informed that it was not a problem, as the PCNPA can move the boundaries to wherever they liked?

A previous application was rejected stating that: ‘This site would extend Saundersfoot into the countryside and would be locally prominent on approach to Saundersfoot. Access is at capacity with no pedestrian facilities available to the site and separate access is not achievable. Development of this site is not supported’. So please tell me what has changed that it is back on the books as an achievable project.

So my last words are to ask the local planners to come up with a realistic local plan, to first improve current facilities and then come back to the residents with a housing plan which I am sure would be more acceptable, with an infrastructure that could cope better with an increase in numbers of people.

Mick Lightwood,

Saundersfoot.