SURELY the planners from our Harrogate councils are having a laugh? Three thousand houses around the Hammertons, possibly 2,000 on Flaxby golf course, 400 at Highfield Farm and 600 at Manse Farm. This is madness. The infrastructure won’t cope. It will effectively create an entire new town. When these planners see flat land they think ‘houses’. What the rest of us see is farmland where we grow food – remember that? It’s quite important – and beauty. We cannot build over all our countryside. It would be a terrible, cruel mistake and our children will curse us for our short-sightedness. If these houses have to go anywhere – and where are the residents all going to get jobs – why not to the west of Harrogate on poorer land? Talking of infrastructure, I suggested to King James’s headmaster a while ago that an entirely new school should be built on the Manse Farm site and the KJS present site be sold for building. This is, I believe, what Leeds City Council is doing at Boston Spa. Clearly a council with some common sense.