Published: Thursday, 28th January, 2010 7:00am

Letter: Young families still need homes

by Correspondent

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WHATEVER Alan Law thinks (Chronicle, January 21) the people who have been campaigning to save Pincents Hill chose to call themselves the Save Calcot Campaign and he can tell them they are wrong if he wants to!

In broader terms, yes, I believe there is a need for more housing in this area. People are living longer, their children want to leave home and have homes of their own where they can bring up their own families, and many of them want to stay in the area in which they have been brought up.

I respect and believe we should respond to those aspirations, but it is clear Cllr Law and the Tories do not.

I am happy with the allocations in the South East Plan (especially since Labour ministers took out Kennet Meadows in response to the campaign by Martin Salter and others) but Cllr Law wants to pull up the drawbridge and make young couples move away from the area to find a home, taking their children away from their grandparents too.

Labour made it clear in our response to West Berkshire Council's consultation on the Core Strategy that we favoured a dispersal approach to meet the plan targets, I've repeated that several times since, and I am delighted that Cllr Law and his colleagues have finally come round to our way of thinking!

Naz Sarkar, Labour's Prospective Parliamentary Candidate for Reading West