AS a resident of Cinderford I've seen letters and articles in the local press about the proposed Cinderford Northern Quarter and it seems to me that Cinderford is (as usual) being given a lot of promises that won't be delivered.

The Forest of Dean District Council says that building on (what is at present) a rich wildlife site will regenerate the town and provide masses of jobs, but to me what they say just doesn't make sense.

On the Forest Vale Industrial Estate there are currently many businesses that employ people – one assumes that at least some of those employed are local people.

However, within the current estate a large proportion is simply wasted from an employment point of view. 

Large areas are used by hauliers or just used for storage of containers and old vehicles spread out randomly with unused areas interwoven between and which either do not generate any employment at all or at best very little.

On the one hand the Forest of Dean District Council has designated the current industrial estate as 'intensification of employment generating use', but on the other hand the permitted land uses include use class 'B8 – storage or distribution' (which includes open air storage) and it is this use which seems to me to take up a large proportion of the existing industrial estate.

Surely encouraging workshops, factories and even offices instead of using it for storage would provide much more regeneration than building on a unique natural resource that could be used to bring wildlife tourists to Cinderford?

In the plans for the Cinderford Northern Quarter, an industrial area is proposed but again the land use includes B8, so, bearing in mind the general decline of industry and production in this country the likelihood is that storage would be the predominant usage.

Even if warehousing were built instead of sprawling open-air storage, the number of jobs created would be minimal – so how are all the promised jobs going to be created?

 In the 'new jobs' figures, the Forest of Dean District Council seem to be including the staff at the college, whereas presumably most of the existing staff from Five Acres would simply transfer to the new site – so no net gain in employment.

If a hotel does get built, I'm convinced it would be a 'budget' hotel because generally visitors to the Forest of Dean spend most of their time walking or cycling rather than being pampered in a hotel and certainly statistics show that visitors spend less than average on their stay in the area.

Budget hotels simply provide a room and breakfast and strive to keep costs down by employing as few people as possible. As far as I can see, no study has been carried out to determine what effect a new hotel would have on the existing bed and breakfast businesses in the area, who, I believe, are already having to work hard to keep their businesses viable.

With the proposed Northern Quarter scheme it looks like Coleford residents would get a nice local facility in lieu of the existing college and Cinderford would get nothing in the way of regeneration.

– Nicky Packer, Cinderford.