Richard Baker (Chronicle, Letters, November 9) and the warnings at the end of your editorial comment of the same date are absolutely correct. 

This planning application by the Church Commissioners is not right for Winchester. 

In a general sense the world is moving on very fast indeed and the application belongs to another era.

In the context of Winchester, the traffic that it would cause is quite unacceptable and much that it proposes in the way of knowledge, research and development could be profitably placed within the city.

If Bushfield is regarded as ripe for development because it is a "brownfield site", what is really needed in this part of the world, and in Winchester too, (a point made about a month ago by your correspondent, Janet Budd) is housing, particularly low-cost and rented housing.

Unfortunately for this to happen, there is a mismatch in the management of the Church of England.

The Archbishop of Canterbury correctly writes about the evils of our present obsession with Mammon. On the other hand the Church Commissioners are wedded to that very obsession with Mammon, because, understandably, they have to pay out pensions and look after much scarcely used real estate. Really, the C of E needs to rethink, totally, how to do the good work that it rightly aims to do, which would include support for good, new affordable housing for people to live in.

As for Bushfield, apart from providing pleasant, sustainable accommodation, housing there would need to fit into the landscape, have the necessary communal buildings, but absolutely eschew anything that remotely resembles high-rise.

This application for a muddled, out-of-date, white elephant must not be given the go-ahead.

Jock Macdonald, 
Stockbridge Road,

Fulflood, 
Winchester

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