I TEND to think that residents are not best served by local politicians having a political knock about over important local issues such as development on Thornbury's green fields.

What is most important is that we work together in the best interests of our town.

However, I do feel that some of the factual inaccuracies raised by Lib Dem Cllr Emmerson regarding development in last week's letter must be addressed.

It is extremely important that we are clear on exactly how we came to be in this uneasy position where we must defend our town from speculative developers.

If we go back to 2013 you will find that the shortfall in the amount of houses we are required to build today, revealed by the Charfield decision and leaving us open to opportunistic developments now, are very much a consequence of the Liberal and Labour Groups' 2013 'development strategy' for our area.

By allocating complicated development sites that have been slow to come forward it has allowed developers to successfully argue that Thornbury must take up the slack.

Only the south east and south west of Thornbury are protected by the Green Belt. It is also very concerning that Mr Emmerson has too forgotten that who first actively argued for and encouraged the beginnings of of the developments we see today, namely the Park Farm development.

If you were to ask for the minutes of the meetings or to search the archives of this very newspaper you would see the Liberal Democrat run Thornbury Town Council, including Mr Emmerson, vouching for Park Farm - the first domino - being included in this strategy.

Since then it was clear that this acted as a flare in the night sky, signalling that our town is 'up for growth', resulting in developers buying up the surrounding land, poised for the situation we see now.

Cllr David Chubb