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Public Anger at Housing proposals        23 June 2011
The people of Devizes turned out in force to hear the Trust’s Traffic Advisor, Tony Sedgwick, outline the impact that building yet more houses in the town would have on traffic congestion and air pollution.  More than 150 attended the meeting at the Town Hall, with numbers being forced to stand
He emphasised that air pollution was now over the limit imposed by law at at least seven points in the town and the Council had a statutory duty to put forward proposals to bring this level down. Building more houses without investing in ways of reducing traffic would make matters worse.  He underlined the danger to public health posed by polluted air, quoting from a number of authoritative sources such as Parliament, the European Commission and the British Lung Foundation.
The meeting was told that the Trust was being advised by a specialist in European law whose opinion was that if the Planning Committee approved more building, knowing that it would increase pollution, already above the legal limit, it would be acting illegally.
The Council’s draft Core Strategy, now out for public consultation, was totally lacking in any  proposals to tackle traffic congestion or pollution and was, in Tony’s words “ High on Ambition and short on detail”.  It claimed that by 2026 traffic would be flowing more freely, yet contained no policies which would bring this about.  
Many of those present contributed to the debate and it was clear that the general view was that Devizes has had too much house building in the past few years without the necessary infrastructure.  Now is the time to stop, get the infrastructure in place before considering further expansion.  If not, more houses would mean more traffic and more traffic would mean higher levels of pollution.
Ted East, the Trust’s Chairman, called for a vote on the motion that no more approvals should be given for housing until the air pollution problem was solved. This was carried overwhelmingly.