ACCORDING to a recent article in The Guardian's sustainable business pages "CLT is fast becoming a much talked about material in construction" due to its qualities of reduced weight and low carbon manufacture. It sounds very much like plywood in fact.

"LT is produced from industrially dried, quick growing spruce (larch or pine are alternatives) boards, stacked at right angles and glued together over their entire surface in generally 3, 5, 7 or more board or panel layers. The majority of CLT is manufactured in Austria and imported to the UK.

The panels are used as large external and internal wall, floor, ceiling and roof elements. They are factory manufactured with precision cut-outs for doors, windows and building services. Delivered to site in prefabricated form, they are slotted into place in situ."

What an opportunity this must be to stimulate the Forest of Dean economy with an abandoned plywood factory on our doorstep, a forest surrounding us and a river to offer the most environmentally friendly form of distribution. Given its wartime origins, it might even be considered a 'swords to ploughshares' initiative.

For decades, as a country, we've been investing in creating wealth from property development without the corresponding investment in local employment, hence the increasing tendency for rural environments like ours to become dormitories with a dependency on car use, road networks, and for some, a toll bridge distancing local people from employment. Running and especially insuring a car is an expensive but seemingly necessary essential for many young job seekers.

Even now, I see there's yet another housing development planned, right on the Pine End site. Why aren't we thinking in a more joined-up way in terms of local economic development?

– Jeff Mowatt,?Parkend.