IF you keep your eyes open around the Forest you'll see some curiously shaped little buildings.

Usually made of Forest stone with the top few feet built up of brick, with a single pitched roof of corrugated iron, or pan-tiles, these are old pig sties. When these little garden structures were no longer needed for their original purpose, rather than knock them down, many Foresters simply converted them to another use. With a few second-hand bricks or maybe some concrete blocks the rooflines were raised, a door was put on and people had a garden shed, workshop or summer-house.

Most Foresters, by nature, know all about 'regeneration.' Foresters know that 'regeneration' means adapting and re-using what's already there, unlike some of the bodies operating locally who seem to think that 'regeneration' means 'out with the old and in with the new.'

The South West Regional Development Agency – surely the quintessential QUANGO if ever there was one – based in some remote office, have decided that rather than re-use the pit-head baths building at Princess Royal, they'll just bulldoze it into the ground, to replace it with some anonymous industrial estate.

The RDA with planning permission from our beloved District Council seem to think that more industrial estates are needed to provide much wanted jobs in the Forest.

Unemployment here is around 1,000 and natural population growth is close to zero. Surely those 1,000 or so jobs could be created at Vantage Point or the former SCA site? If the RDA are dead set on building industrial units at the site, why not build them around the old building? Refurbished, it would be a fitting centrepiece to the site – officers of The Royal Forest of Dean Business Centre perhaps?

The latest edition of Pevsner – the 'bible' of important British buildings – lists Princess Royal. If the people who put together this guide can see the importance of the building why can't FODDC, SWRDA or our local MP?

This building is a physical embodiment of our Forest cultural heritage, of which all Foresters – both in-comers and those born and bred, should all be rightly proud. A statue or plaque is not enough – this building must be saved. – Jason Griffiths, The Cottage, The Bourts, Lydbrook.