Sir, – Your website reports "Dismay as developer seeks to delay building A-road junction”. We in STUFF predicted this when we fought the planning application. Once again our planners are out manoeuvred and in our view the developer will probably never build the A168/Topcliffe Road junction at Thirsk.

You report council leader Mark Robson saying "the revised proposals represented an extraordinary amount of building before the junction was completed”. And, "I am very disappointed that they haven't done it as per the planning conditions, but this is something Hambleton would not be able to enforce, even with court action. I am concerned that the roads will not be able to cope with the amount of traffic resulting from the amount of development proposed."

He should be concerned. The plans for this site should have been rejected in the first place and should never, ever have been given approval as it was for exactly the concerns about traffic he only now seems to have woken up to.

That Hambleton is unable to enforce the conditions is so laughable it is ridiculous. This says to us that the planners have simply not done their job right. The politicians accepted a promise from the developer that they would build the interchange within the first 50 or so houses being occupied. But this was a promise and that relied on the developer actually keeping that promise. In the real world we know "promises are not worth the paper they are written on"! Not so the district council, it seems.

Perhaps Cllr Robson would care to explain why the council didn't enter into a Section 278 agreement under the Highways Act? This would have set out the conditions precisely and would have been enforceable having the force of law behind them. So, why wasn't this done and will it be done?

Can this stupid situation be resolved? It is plain from their past actions that the planners will approve another development application from this company, despite their welching on their promise. They cannot be trusted on this evidence and really should be thrown off the site letting a more credible developer take it over.

We will end up with hundreds of houses, few of them affordable and no interchange. Now for all the promises "Oh, no, this won't happen." Really! I too want to live in cloud cuckoo land. It must be wonderful there.

JOE SALMON

Chair, STUFF (Sowerby and Thirsk For the Future)

Sowerby.