I LIVE in Romanby and one afternoon a few weeks before Christmas, I needed to go to Jewson’s builders’ merchants at Swain Court in Northallerton.

I drove down Romanby Road and turned left into the High Street, and wham! A complete traffic gridlock outside Wilkinsons the length of the High Street.

I needed to go somewhere else as well and was worried about closing, and so I looked at my watch. This is why I found out that it took me 14 minutes to get to Jewson’s, and as we all know traffic jams in our town are commonplace, caused by the level crossing at Lowgates. We’re going to get a relief road and bridge, we know that, but this is years away, and then we hear rumours that a supermarket might apply to take over the old B&Q site: and I worry.

My wife and I have lived in quite a few places in England and Wales over the last 50 years or so and we’ve seen so many towns whose hearts stopped beating due to a haemorrhaging of business to out of town supermarkets and retail parks.

So, I’m asking our planners to please bear this in mind at any future planning meetings. Our lovely town is already struggling to survive this slow strangulation by hindered traffic without also being in danger of losing its life through a draining away of its lifeblood.

David J Smith, Romanby, Northallerton