I’D like to be able to say that any shred of faith I retained in the ‘democratic process’ was destroyed when Wiltshire Council decided to back away from legal action and bow to the inevitable blot on the landscape that will be Hampton Park II.

But I can’t say that in all honesty. Because after years of professional Wiltshire-watching, I didn’t have any illusions left anyway.

I never believed for a second that they’d pursue the case to a costly judicial review.

Council sources suggested to me months ago that the threat was a ploy to force Barratt Homes back to the negotiating table, in the hope that they’d amend their hugely unpopular designs.

I’m sure Barratt didn’t get where they are today without realising that’s what councils do.

No, the battle was lost a long time ago, when the Labour government decreed that south Wiltshire would have to find space for thousands of new homes, and the old district council just rolled over.

Two years ago, as a reporter, I sat through three weeks of public hearings about the resulting schemes to inflict massive green field developments on all sides of the city.

Council planners (working for Wiltshire by then, but the faces were the same) positively fell over themselves in their eagerness to prove that these homes could be ‘sustainably’ accommodated.

In their favour, it was the only way they could see of getting much-needed ‘affordable’ homes built.

But why wasn’t there a way to create more social housing without having to line the pockets of the big boy builders who were itching to cover our countryside in identikit boxes?

Why didn’t all our elected representatives stand up and declare that it’s wrong to destroy the landscape setting of our beautiful city for people who will have to commute elsewhere to work, because there won’t be enough jobs here for them?

I often walk my dog along the ridge at Bishopdown, above the fields doomed to be buried under the new urban sprawl. The song of the skylarks up there has always raised my spirits. But this summer the pleasure has been ruined by the certain knowledge that they’ll soon be gone forever.

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