I WAS surprised to see in The Press of March 18 that plans for a 130-home development on Boroughbridge Road, between Trenchard Road and Wheatlands House, are at such an advanced stage.

This potential development site was slipped into the council’s further site consultation document in July last year and which was produced after the initial local draft plan for York had passed through its obligatory “consultation” process.

A full planning application for the scheme was submitted on February 2. Legitimacy for the proposal – which lies in the “de-facto” green belt – is that York’s green-belt boundaries have never been formally established.

Equally conveniently, York’s local draft plan has never been ratified, and that this parcel of land is (following the further sites consultation) to be classified as housing allocation.

It is true that the proposal will not quite remove the last vestige of green space between suburban York and Poppleton (an area to the west end of the site has been designated as public open space), but, together with the Civil Service development on the opposite side of the road, is part of the subtle creep towards coalescence.

Incidentally, the planning application was validated just two days after submission.

From my long experience as an architect I have never known such a breathtakingly rapid turn-around by a plans processing unit, especially for a proposal of this size.

Richard Carr, Station Road, Upper Poppleton, York.