WE purchased 13 High Street in Burnham-on-Crouch because of the area’s charm as a working maritime town rather than a chocolate box type of place.

However, if the proposed Prior housing development goes ahead as planned, Burnham will neither be a working maritime town nor a chocolate box one.

Visitors certainly won’t be coming to see a collection of identikit houses along the sea front, instead of some characterful boat sheds.

And as for the boat yard, to which the sheds belong, it will not survive for very long without the storage facility for boats.

Yet, the boat yard has been a defining feature of the town for all the boats going up and down the Crouch for a very long time.

It is part of an attractive and interesting row of buildings fronting the river.

This is what visitors, and a large number of the inhabitants, really want to see, not a collection of mediocre identical houses.

And this is also very relevant when you think of the visitors going over to the bird sanctuary on Wallasea Island and the view they will have from there.

But apart from visitors, who would bring money into the town?

One of the main concerns for the town council should be the question of providing jobs for its inhabitants.

This is firmly laid down in the recently adopted Burnham Neighbourhood Development Plan.

It states: “Land and building in primary or directly related river employment uses will be safeguarded.

“Insofar as planning permission is required their conversion to residential use will not be supported.

“Proposals for the retail, leisure or tourism uses of the buildings concerned will be supported where they would comply with other policies in the development plan and where they would not change the overall character of the riverside.”

Hence, if the plan of replacing the sheds used for storage and work on boats with housing goes ahead, this would go directly against the plan.

We therefore object in the strongest terms to the replacing of the sheds by indifferent houses, which will add nothing positive to the town.

Ingrid Price-Gschlössl, High Street, Burnham