YOUR report about attempted over-development with flats of the former Wray's Brick Yard, now called Birch Park Industrial Estate, had Ian McAndrew of Harrison's stating "the sooner the area is developed the better for local residents" (December 16).

As a local resident and spokesperson for the residents' association I objected to the development because blocks of four-storey single flats alongside the existing bungalows would be wrong for the existing community.

There are many other unanswered questions in relation to this development including amenity space, pollution of the beck, further overloading of the existing school population, traffic and increased social problems.

I don't know if anyone has complained about the area, apart from when I did when a bulldozer illegally flattened it last spring. The site, on an industrial estate, is also down for industrial use in the only approved Local Plan and Government guidance has not changed enough for a suburban site to allow that.

This site, like the New Earswick and Mayfields Nature Reserves, was a brick pit. But a run-down green site can soon be turned into a silk purse unlike the pig's ears of multi-storey apartments the developers are now erecting around York suburbs. They can't be restored to anything.

York people need to decide who should be controlling the future of this splendid city; property developers, council planners or their elected representatives. It looks as if the developers are hand-in-hand with the officers.

Mick Phythian,

Monkton Road, York.

Updated: 10:02 Friday, December 19, 2003