A LETTER from Linda Woolley (Nov 19 ‘Leadership call’) queried Cotswold District Council’s (CDC) ability to ‘seize the day’ on issues such as the provision of affordable housing, defending local interests on housing requirements, and responding to the refugee crisis.

May I reassure Ms Woolley our record on affordable housing is excellent. We aimed to deliver 400 affordable homes between 2012 and 2016 and have already exceeded target.

We also introduced a right to buy scheme to help young local people get onto the property ladder. Secondly, Ms Woolley alleged CDC did not seem to be ‘rebelling’ against the government’s housing demands in defence of local interests.

She is clearly not aware of the number of occasions when the council has rejected planning applications from developers and mounted strong justifications when they went to appeal.

Unfortunately, national legislation is weighted in favour of development, and appeal inspectors have tended to find in their favour.

As regards the emerging local plan, we fully understand why some people are not happy with the number of houses proposed over the next 20 years but we – and other authorities – must work within the confines of government guidelines to gain approval by the inspector.

We hope the local plan will be a strong buttress against future development being allowed randomly on appeal.

Finally, I should remind Ms Woolley that we announced publicly in early September that we would be responding positively to the government’s call to help resettle 20,000 refugees, and I trust that she was pleased to learn that we have recently pledged to accommodate five security-cleared Syrian refugee families.

CLLR SUE JEPSON

Cabinet member for Planning and Housing