I AGREE with what Russell Alway is saying, (we don't need expensive houses) but we do need a car park, just not in this location.

I have carried out a car parking survey over a period of three separate days (March 28, 30 and April 1) during school holidays and my findings are:

lPotters pond long stay car park 23 spaces (averaging 14 cars per day)

lChipping car park 36 short stay (average 22 cars per day)

lChipping car park 36 long stay spaces (average 30 cars per day)

lChipping car park two disabled bays (always empty)

lCo-op car park five Disabled bays (always empty)

lCo-op car park 43 general spaces ( average 22 empty)

lRenishaw car park behind lower Long Street (quite full)

lThere are an average of 15 cars on Symn Lane adjacent to the swimming pool and Chipping Gardens

lAnd approximately 15 cars parked at the top of the Chipping alongside the green. This number drastically increases twice daily during school start and finishing times.

If people are too lazy to walk from Potters Pond car park a distance of approx 276 metres to a point half way between Tesco and the Post Office then I can't imagine them walking a distance of 500 metres from the proposed new car park to the same destination.

Developers building new houses do not take into account that most houses will have two or more cars and only give a driveway for one small car, the result is that the other car is parked somewhere else, usually annoying other people by parking their cars on footpaths.

This proposed car park, if it gets built, will be a blot on the landscape but will prove invaluable to the young people of Wotton who will use it as it will become Wotton's new skatepark because it will be mostly empty of cars and prove a much safer place to be than having to walk all the way down a dangerous road (as they will not use the longer new path when it's built).

Unless Wotton gets double yellow lines painted along many of its roads then we will always have a problem because in the 21st century people are lazy and will not walk.

I, like Russell, was born and bred in Wotton so we do not want to see the Cotswold escarpment desecrated just to satisfy the egos of a certain few.

Where Wotton's fire station and doctors' surgery now stands was once one of our playing fields with swings and slides etc. We lost that.

We then lost Symn Lane playing field to a school, leaving Wotton without a field or village green for any events to be held on (unlike Kingswood and Charfield). Synwell playing field is Synwell's, bought and paid for by the people of Synwell many years ago - not wotton.

Mark Spencer

Court Orchard

Wotton-under-Edge