There is a phenomenon in psychology called cognitive dissonance, about how a person deals with holding two contradictory opinions at the same time. Ian Fox’s letters seem to be a case in point.

From his partisan tone, it appears that he is a supporter of the Conservative government. He also professes to be angry at the level of development happening in Watford. Yet it is the Conservative government he supports that has trebled Watford’s housing targets to 800 per year, thus imposing on us the development he hates.

Facing up to this would be uncomfortable. So he casts around for someone else to blame and chooses the borough council. He justifies this by ignoring inconvenient facts, citing irrelevant ones and resorting to further mutually contradictory arguments.

He bemoans traffic congestion, appears to believe all new homes should have their own parking, but then endorses building lots of eight-storey blocks behind the high street. Has it occurred to him that large numbers of new flats inside the ring road all with their own parking might just add to traffic congestion?

Read more: 'I am angry of Watford'

He appears to regard The Range as an ‘unsuitable location’. Yet the Government’s National Planning Policy Framework compels a ‘significant uplift’ in density on sites well served by public transport (eg Watford Junction) and envisages lower car parking levels in order to achieve higher densities on such sites. In other words this is exactly the sort of site where Conservative government planning policy prescribes intensive redevelopment to achieve housing targets.

According to the Government, far from allowing too much development we are not producing enough. It recently announced that Watford has failed its housing delivery test and must produce an action plan for speeding up construction of new homes.

The Government’s strategy of concentrating development on brownfield sites close to town centres and railway stations means we are one of many councils around the M25 that are having to accept taller buildings than we would have done had our targets not been increased. To give just one example, Woking, a Conservative-run council, allowed a development with buildings of 34 and 32 storeys that is now nearing completion.

The Conservative government’s targets mean more than 14,000 homes have to be built in Watford over an 18-year period. The town is just eight square miles with no real hinterland available for expansion at the edges. With no option to build outwards, upwards is the only way we can go. This is a big challenge, but the local plan that Mr Fox decries is the best way of maximising local control over the process to achieve infrastructure required to cope with new development .

So what makes me angry is likes of Mr Fox, who have no words of criticism for the Conservative government trebling our housing target, appear to believe that the town can cope with 14,000 extra homes and the same number of additional cars without any significant effect on its landscape or transport network, and who then affect indignation when in the real world this proves not to be the case.

Cllr Iain Sharpe

Cabinet Member for Regeneration and Development