Dear Editor,

The Welsh Assembly wants to encourage play and exercise to keep us fit and healthy and the overall responsibility lies with the local authority, Ceredigion County Council. They have a duty to provide recreational space for everyone. So why did any of the community play areas and recreational space get transferred to Tai Ceredigion? Did Ceredigion County Council's officers and elected councillors not think that play and recreational areas needed to be protected from being lost? Anyone who lives in an area where Tai Ceredigion provides their services could find themselves in the same position as Maesglas.

Whilst we recognise that there is a need for new houses to be built, using every piece of communal land in the centre of town is not necessarily the way forward. There should be a strategy to develop small estates in villages to protect the decline of rural areas and save the village shop, the few remaining post offices and pubs. By increasing their populations there will be more chance of saving schools from closure. We need hospitals and doctors surgeries in the right place and good transport services to provide easy access. good planning is essential to develop Ceredigion as a whole and over development is only going to create problems in the future. Tai Ceredigion only view Maesglas as a windfall development site because it costs them nothing at all and there are other areas in Ceredigion that fulfil the same criteria.

That is why we need a public inquiry to determine the outcome once and for all. The residents and tenants want to retain the play area as it is or how it was before the play equipment was put in to storage in one of the empty garages on the site. There is plenty of scope to improve the area by providing a half size football pitch for junior football and a softball tennis area and netball court and even making provisions to include equipment for senior citizens to use, the outer perimeter would make an excellent cycle track. That's all it takes is a little imagination and a lot of hard work and we could have the safest and ideal play area in Wales. So come on Tai Ceredigion and see how important this area is to the community that use this play area.

ME EVANS

54 Maesglas

Cardigan