Further to your Chippenham front page last week: ‘Homes plan from firm behind Range’.

Chippenham 2020 is joining up its development at The Range with its plan to build 2,600 houses on the last remaining attractive landscape visible from the town, much of which is prone to flooding.

The Range development is not dependent on Chippenham Riverside nor vice-versa. The number of homes proposed is 2,000 more than is required by the Core Strategy, and none should be built on viable farmland when other sites are available.

There is an acceptable alternative to the proposed Range A350 site at M4 Junction 17, dismissed by Wiltshire Council and by the developers on cost grounds.

Junction 17 is 4.3 miles from Chippenham station, and only 10 minutes by road. The A350 site will only be available (practically) by road, so the benefit for employees from Chippenham over J17 is minimal. However, as the proposed site is four miles from J17, and based on the developers’ own propaganda that 95 per cent of the 250 HGV movements per day will be to and from the M4 at J17, that equates to a minimum of 1,000 miles per day of heavy traffic.

Even if running only five days a week, that equals over a quarter of a million unnecessary and expensive miles per year that could be saved by siting the facility at J17.

What about the promised 1,000 jobs? There are around 360 currently at The Range depot at Cribbs Causeway (which is to be closed); they will have to be offered jobs in Chippenham first. There may be 100 in the new store, and all the truck drivers already have jobs. Where are the rest going to be? And how many of those zero-hours contracted minimum-wage employees will be able to buy even low-cost housing, if it’s ever built, in the proposed Chippenham Riverside development? None.

So Wiltshire Council, bring jobs to the locality but put them where they belong, at Junction 17. We don’t need more commuter housing, we need affordable housing. Pay local builders to build them in small quantities, in every town and village, and tell the land speculators and international building conglomerates where to get off.

Steve Perry, CAUSE (Chippenham Against Urban Sprawl in the East), Chippenham Community Voice.