Sir – Our Witney community is under considerable threat.

Our district council is about to react to suspect future housing figures by destroying the very core of why we live here.

And we have only until Friday, September 19, to make our voices heard.

You need to tell your local councillor that the 1,000 houses they propose in North Witney will destroy Witney and Hailey and bring considerable disruption to all villages towards Oxford.

Tell West Oxfordshire District Council and your local councillor no significant development should be allowed in the floodplain or on watercourses into the Windrush Valley immediately above the town.

Significant water retention action is required now and it is bizarre to believe that 1,000 houses could pay for what is required and not add to the problem.

If you have been subject to flooding then you need to identify who is responsible for what will happen to your home or business in the future if this development is permitted.

Tell them the proposed West End link road leads nowhere. Apart from crossing two arms of the river and pouring more concrete on to the floodplain, it would dump traffic at the foot of Hailey Road and increase traffic by 69 per cent in the Witney conservation area (Oxfordshire County Council traffic modelling forecast 2011), would increase West End traffic flows to an historic high and cause rat-runs through Farmers Close, New Yatt Road and Wood Green.

The proposed northern distributor road which cuts into the heart of Hailey is damned by the district council’s own landscape and visual review of 2012, which says: “A major peripheral road would be out of keeping with the local landscape character and would be visually intrusive.”

If you live in any community to the east, such as New Yatt, North Leigh, Long Hanborough, Church Hanborough or Bladon, where your traffic will increase yet again, you need to tell your district councillors to vote no, and if not, ask them why not. Make them accountable to you.

Finally, demand to know the audited cost of roads, bridges, flood schemes, sewage dispersal, schools and transport infrastructure before they even consider destroying your town by building on an ancient landscape, all of which is within the Wychwood Project area.

Ensure your councillor hears your voice before Witney is irrevocably damaged.

Stuart Harrison, chairman, North Witney Action Group, New Yatt Road, Witney