AFTER several years of successful resistance by the residents of Willow Road and Highfield Road, Prestwich, Grimshaws have finally been given planning permission to build an MOT service centre on a small plot of land at junction 17. off the M60.

Although the council was well aware of our objections, and despite the fact that an identical application was rejected only six months ago, nobody notified the residents that this item was going to this meeting. Every resident except for those in one household had signed a petition objecting, but we were not given the opportunity to present it or to have one of us speak at the meeting. This must be one of the most perverse decisions ever taken by the council. This inappropriate development will be built within a few yards of the houses that surround the site and on land that was historically residential.

The issue of traffic-calming measures was only one and not the most significant of many matters that worried local residents. Those of us whose properties back onto the site will now have to put up with cars driving to within a few feet of the rear of our houses for 12 hours a day, six days a week. And if Tesco is anything to go by, then six days will undoubtedly become seven in time.

It is now obvious that businesses are given a higher priority by our elected representatives than the people who elect them. It is no surprise to me that an ever-decreasing minority now elects councillors and Members of Parliament.

Bury councillors have abrogated their responsibilities to their electorate by applying a pathetic condition that Grimshaws pay for traffic-calming measures on the affected streets. These measures will almost certainly not be necessary because these already congested residential streets will become completely log-jammed by traffic accessing and leaving the Grimshaws site. This will be exacerbated during school start and finish times by the parents who, not unreasonably, collect their children from Our Lady of Grace Primary School.

It is obvious to me that no political party now acts for the residents in my area and the people here feel alienated from any sense of a democratic process.

Perhaps it now time for ordinary people to show these unrepresentative councillors what we think of them. We need independently-minded people to oppose them at the next election in May. Of course that costs money and only the political parties with business paymasters can afford to do it. Still, I live in hope of an improvement.

G. M. VAN HECKE,

Willow Road,

Prestwich.