J DAWES is getting excited at the skeletal grey steelwork taking shape as the Community Stadium (Letters, June 27).

The reaction of private developers is not so positive. It ranges between despondency and anger.

Why? Because for years the city council stated that no high structure should ever be allowed on the edge of the city because of interference with views from the green belt to the Minster.

At Monks Cross, developers were never able to get approval for anything above two storeys.

But when the council decided it wanted to bulldoze Huntington Stadium and replace it with a mega-structure, a long held planning principle, not for the first time, was conveniently ignored.

It is double standards and inconsistency of this type that brings the planning system into serious disrepute.

Matthew Laverack,

Lord Mayors Walk, York