WHILE I understand that county councillor Graham Morgan is a member of Hands Off Our Forest (HOOF), it is difficult to understand how he can now tolerate sales of publically owned forest estate land. This is extremely nauseating as everyone across the country is relying on the Forest of Dean to resist any 'precedent' being established between the two rivers, that would allow such sales to become common-place, countrywide. If it not stopped by the foresters of the Dean, where else would a successful resistance to piece-meal forestry privatisation spring forth from?

Currently in the Cinderford Northern Quarter alone, we stand to immediately lose 57 of the 187 acres of bio-diverse woodland, currently owned and enjoyed by many people within the Forest of Dean, and the surrounding area that is being threatened with being turned into development land and thus privatised.

Further, Graham Morgan was most supportive of the Forest of Dean District Council sending a delegation to Westminster on January 17, 2011 to oppose the sales of the forest estate within the Forest of Dean. The objective of the visit was to extend and consolidate the protective designation of the Forest, afforded by Section 39(2A) of the Forestry Act 1967 as exempted in 1981.

His letter (May 24) claims; "we are going to give back some three times the amount of land that we will obtain from the Forestry Commission".

His statement refers to the legal wording associated with the semantics which describe a land exchange between the Forestry Commission and the district council. In truth nothing changes apart from naming and exchanging a part of statutory forest as 'open space' for forestry land to be sold off to the highest bidder for development.

The resulting 175 new dwellings built on concrete rafts will not regenerate Cinderford town and will simply destroy and take away the beautiful lakeside and woodland environment of New Town and Hawkwell, not to mention the contentious disintegration of the entire community and economic infrastructure of the Coleford area.

Finally I have no wish to quarrel with Graham, but he and his fellow county councillors must start honouring their pledges to Forest electorate in a open and forthright manner.

– Andrew Gardiner – (Forest Champion), Ruardean.