Rid us of the Gateway ‘Green Elephant’

Since that time the following things have happened on Bubbenhall’s doorstep mostly in the last few years.

1.The life of the landfill site has been extended such, that it is still in operation today continuing to cause noise and rubbish/dust pollution from the site.

2.The business park at Stoneleigh to the south west has been considerably expanded from a few small businesses in a few Nissen huts to an industrial conglomerate building its UK head office on the site, along with other Nissen huts being converted into offices. Consequently we suffer the occupiers of the buildings using our village roads as a rat run from Coventry along with attendant increase in traffic on the surrounding roads.

3. The airport has had industrial warehousing constructed on its perimeter causing noise and light pollution to Bubbenhall along with Royal Mail traffic.

Now, it is being proposed to build more warehousing closer into Bubbenhall (Courier ‘Gateway plans’ last week) with consequent noise, light and traffic pollution on green belt land. As you can probably imagine the villagers feel like General Custer surrounded on all sides by developments and no way out of the mayhem and chaos. I would suggest that Warwick District Council and Warwickshire County Council should be looking after its citizens/ratepayers.We are a rural community with no facilities, no shops, a very limited bus service, yet more than a fair share of the industrial/business facilities for both Warwick and Warwickshire.

In addition, I do not understand the demand for the warehousing in this area, given that the Peugeot car plant has stood unused for more than six years and has been advertising for customised warehousing customers on the land and not one unit has been built to date.The number of jobs the developers are saying they will create is farcical. Warehousing does not use typical industrial employee/square feet ratios. Their claim of 11,000 jobs is out by a factor of 10 at least and many of those jobs will not be new but transferred from other places.

Come on WDC and Warwickshire County Council, do the right thing and rid us of this ‘Green Elephant’. It is plainly not needed or is there some other ulterior motive for your enthusiasm of which we are unaware?- John Farrow, via email.