SIR – Your leader column is a useful contribution to the contentious debate about building houses in Worcestershire.
As chairman of Ripple Parish Council (RPC) I declare an interest in these matters. Ripple parish is medium sized with 650 dwellings and 1,550 residents. We have no schools, shops, medical, dentistry or other local services. However, we have been lumped in to Upton Town to suit the planners’ agenda. The inexplicable South Worcestershire Development Plan (SWDP) has assigned 95 dwellings to be built in Ripple parish.
Extraordinarily, to date, 187 dwellings have been approved or are in the pipeline for Ripple parish, some of which are on greenfield sites. This is a 50 per cent increase in dwellings close to Upton Bridge. In addition, Cemex are seeking approval from Worcestershire County council to extract minerals close to where the 187 dwellings are to be built. This will only add to the congestion at this “pinch point” on the A4104. All of this is within a small area along the A4104 which is a main artery road to West Worcestershire and which is also subject to flooding. The Upton Blues, Folk, Jazz and Sunshine Festivals, the point to point Races and the Three Counties Showground events depend upon this road for access.
The planning officers at Malvern Hills District Council and the planning committee seem oblivious to this, despite detailed technical objections from RPC and local residents. The consequences of ill-advised decisions are clear – disruption, congestion, frustration, loss of green spaces in village communities, expense to ratepayers and degradation of our present and future communities in Ripple Parish and in Upton.
Instead of addressing these issues, due to MHDC’s lack of a five-year housing supply, the council merely defers to Paragraph 14 of the National Planning Policy, which makes a “presumption in favour of sustainable development”, appearing to have little appetite to challenge the principle of “sustainability” with the planning inspectorate if needs be.
RPC have met with planning officers to express these concerns; we have been ignored. RPC understands the need for more affordable housing but this is a small proportion of what will be built. Developers take advantage of the planning vacuum created by the lack of five year housing supply and adoption of the SWDP, and most of the applications are approved.
To mitigate the impact of these decisions the councillors on the planning committee who voted for these planning applications should now lobby councillors at Worcestershire County Council to raise the A4104 and the Hanley Road so they do not flood. The chaos at the A38/A4104 junction also has to be resolved by highways as part of access to West Worcestershire. Harriett Baldwin MP for West Worcestershire should bring her influence to bear on councillors at district and county level to persuade them to resolve these issues.
NICHOLAS BLAKE
Chairman, Ripple Parish Council

Is hospital suffering from staff shortage?
SIR – The report by James Forrest ( Worcester News, Wednesday, December 2) on Worcestershire hospital services being rated as inadequate and placed in special measure is, of course, disappointing – no more so than to the staff who often seem to be rushed off their feet.
 Is this the result of the cuts imposed sometime previously I wonder when staff who left were not replaced? 
P PEGLER
Worcester

What if the letter’s writer doesn’t exist?
SIR – I read the letter (November 26) from Anthony Price proclaiming that God does not exist and that he is just a made up fantasy. Just because we see his name in print do we know if Anthony exists or could he be just a made up fantasy?
I read in the Bible that God exists, it also says that we can contact him through prayer. I have prayed to God on many occasions and he has responded to me through various means, so I know that God exists.
Perhaps I should try to contact Anthony Price to see if he really exists, just like God does.
ANDREW BULL 
Worcester

Bringing back stricter controls at the border
SIR – The leaders of the EU are obviously naive, if they believed that IS and other terror groups would not exploit the migrant crisis and infiltrate it with their people. Almost every man, woman and child could see this was highly likely, and with the EU open border policy, once in, were free to roam the continent, and choose where to maim and kill. Paris terror mastermind Abdelhamid Abaaoud was easily able to flit between Syria, Iraq, Belgium and France because of non-existent controls on borders,and free movement. Surely what happened in Paris is a wake up call to stop free movement and bring back strict border controls!
GB DIPPER
Leominster

Traffic monitoring – a prank in the paper?
SIR –Seeing your headlines today regarding traffic monitoring in Worcester, I had to check my calendar to make sure it was not the 1st of April! 
EMERSON FRYER
Bodenham