We appreciate our rural countryside, but those who live here are finding that we are under ever increasing pressure on all sides. We have larger and wider roads, more housing, distribution centres and solar farms.

I am not convinced the rural community wants development in anyone’s back yard. Politicians come and go, promising much for our countryside, but really only decide how much is needed for a new motorway or rail system, even an airport extension. Civil servants are presumably in jobs that serve their taxpayers for the long term, so I turn to their organisations to be the protectors of our green and pleasant countryside. Politicians set in motion grand plans setting up the legislation for action but the detail is for those who are paid directly by taxpayers to ensure satisfactory completion. Are they up to that job?

I would ask those who live in and who visit this countryside whether they consider the primary criteria for any industrialisation development should be screening, the hiding from view or at the very worst camouflage?

I have attempted to stand in the way of solar farms in demanding that they are simply not seen. I would draw the reader’s attention to the Second World War when the country was under pressure from a very determined adversary just 30 miles from our shores.

Wartime screening and camouflage worked when the bad guys had every intention to destroy our war machine. We managed to hide a full-scale concrete harbour on the South Coast and an invasion army, we managed to protect our aircraft factories, some of our towns effectively were moved, allowing a proportion of destructive bombs to explode in empty fields. We even managed to hide a full-scale supply dump in the desert.

Not bad for amateurs, so why can’t we today produce a level of expertise that ensures our countryside both contributes to modern-day pressures of expansion but remains visually a green and pleasant land?

The forthcoming elections will bring many promises from all sides so it must be our duty to convince any future politician to enshrine visual screening for any development in a rural site as a primary condition, and not just add a tree planting scheme as an afterthought.

Town planners plan towns. So where are the rural planners? The great camouflagers of the last war were artists, using their skills of shape, colour and shadow to confuse the eyes.

We need a new generation of technology to make this work for us today and for future generations.

David Hawkins, Seend.