Judging, however, by the responses given by Mr Burnip and Mr McCurdy to various questions and comments from the floor, this message did not get across.

The tone adopted by these two officers made it quite clear that they regarded those present as a gathering of the ignorant, ill-informed and deluded, and that it was the council's role to explain in patronising civil servant-speak why what the Newmarket community sees as a series of planning disasters are, in fact, failures of the system and not of the people who are meant to be administering it.

These two officers seemed to have no recognition whatsoever of the fact that planning departments in other comparable towns up and down the country have, over the last 30 years, overseen sensitive and well thought out developments.

Over the same period, Newmarket has become a place which is scarcely recognisable as the town which was here three decades ago.

Messrs Burnip and McCurdy appeared not to appreciate that the legal framework within which they operate is the same framework as the one by which all local authorities are governed.

They also appeared not to recognise that, when a developer submits an application, it tends to represent the developer's best case scenario and between saying yes or no to the application there is room for constructive dialogue and negotiation.

If the council's planners had explored this area to any degree at all where the Bury Road development was concerned, we would now have a development with which the local community was entirely happy and which the developer David Hughes of Highland Homes said he would have preferred to the one he is now inflicting upon the town.

It is now accepted that David Hughes did not want to put up a modern-style development any more than the community wanted him to do so. He was forced into this step because he was unable to instigate a sensible pragmatic negotiation with the council.

Even with the benefit of hindsight, Forest Heath Council seems incapable of admitting that the Bury Road development is the consequence of serious mistakes made by our town planners.

If it cannot make this admission, even after last week's angry and tumultuous town meeting, what hope do we have?

Save Historic Newmarket
Action Group
C/o 25 Exeter Road
Newmarket