SIR – Re ‘Traffic chaos as gas workers dig up road’ (Worcester News, September 24).

It was reported that “tempers were close to boiling point” after gas workers started digging up one of the busiest roads in the county – without telling anyone and leading to tailbacks between Malvern and junction 7 of the M5.

Are Worcester News readers fully aware of the effects that the proposed 1,000 more houses and the greatly increased commercial (and retail?) capacity of Malvern and the 2,500 additional houses at Kempsey will have on the already severely overloaded A449 and A4440?

Both (threatened) huge developments would depend heavily on these two motorway and link roads.

No doubt local councillors – who voted to get us this far – will explain just what the developers and planners have in mind (though they certainly haven’t done so to me despite repeated requests).

Meanwhile, I suggest that people in Malvern and Kempsey brush up on their first aid and CPR because ambulances from Worcester A&E will have to fight their way through a gridlocked road.

Yes, Harriett Baldwin [West Worcestershire MP], we – that is Guarlford, Madresfield, Newland, Powick and Kempsey parish councils – agree with you that more dispersed development across the whole of the Malvern Hills district is a large part of the answer.

Your suggestion that more time is needed for identifying sites for small-scale development is surely right.

After all, denying any development at all, and thus no opportunity for a transfusion of new blood into the community means that these communities become moribund.

If we could all be involved in such a way at local level – surely what ‘localism’ means – then there could be real enthusiasm to see many dispersed, small-scale, harmonious developments go ahead.

At the moment there is no enthusiasm whatsoever for the South Worcestershire Development Plan (SWDP) proposals for Malvern and Kempsey, only understandable animosity against huge-scale, bolt-on ‘urban extensions’.

CHARLES EDEN

Madresfield