I DON’T often put pen to paper but I feel incensed at a vitriolic letter in last week’s edition of your paper.

The Dinas Powys Tories assured everyone that their bypass campaign is non-political but when a Plaid councillor asked at a meeting if he could join the Steering Group he was told emphatically by Tory councillors that he could not.

I, like many other Plaid members, have signed the petition and would have willingly helped out had we been allowed to join with them.

In the leaflet delivered by the Tories recently they finally admit that the campaign is a political one, as it also does on Facebook.

Plaid willingly regularly ‘trudge’ (the word used in the letter) the streets to keep in touch with residents throughout the four or five years of the council term, not just in the few months before the elections.

The Tories don’t seem to understand that it was Labour in their Local Development Plan and Tories in their version of the Local Development Plan, who refused to put the bypass into the document.

It’s worth remembering that Plaid proposed that the bypass should be included in the list of priorities in the Vale’s Local Transport Plan. This was opposed by the Conservatives. They also backed the Local Development Plan that will result in 10,000 extra houses being built with no significant improvements in transport infrastructure.

Plaid did not support this irresponsible policy.

At a recent Vale Council meeting a Tory member was heard to say “a link road through from the A48 towards the M4 would be more use than a Dinas Powys bypass” – the Vale Tories don’t seem to be on the same hymn sheet as their local councillors.

Val Hartrey

Plaid Cymru ward member

Dinas Powys