LAST week you reported the Ledbury town meeting, convened by requisition of six townspeople, about the height of the 'new' Leadon Bank care home.

I did not go to the meeting because it could achieve nothing. The proposals of Shaw Homes had, long since, been properly advertised and presented for public scrutiny. Ample time and opportunity had been provided for formal representations to the planning authority - and even for a petition with some 700 signatures to be raised. The planning committee had, as it must, dealt with the planning application within the prescribed time limit and having taken account of more than 100 written representations. In deciding to approve the plans, the committee had to take into account, also, the fact that the site has Tesco, the Old Workhouse and Dawes Court to its east and west and Ledbury's Community Hospital to the south and that there is now a well-established precedent for permitting three-storey buildings in that part of the town.

I hear talk of the suggestion that a heavily supported parish poll would persuade John Prescott to 'call-in' the planning application and reconsider the decision to approve the plans as they stand. The law does not allow him to do that. What the law does allow him is a discretion to quash a granted permission, but only in the most exceptional of circumstances and where it can be shown that it is a matter of national planning importance. How can a three-storey Leadon Bank, surrounded by buildings of similar height be of such importance to the nation as to merit the use of so rarely exercised a power?

Which is the more sensible use of £3,400 of the townspeople's money: a parish poll about something which is unchangeable, or providing 'leisure gardens' (allotments to those of us who remember ours with affection)?

SYLVIA M PICK, Woodfield Road, Deer Park, Ledbury.