IT’S certainly true that Whalley is an extremely busy place these days, especially in the Ribble Valley.

The phenomenon isn’t exactly new – even a decade ago a colleague called it ‘the village of the crammed’.

The problem is that planners allowed large numbers of ‘executive homes’ to be built on former Calderstones Hospital land and unprofitable former industrial/agricultural buildings to be converted into high density, upmarket apartments and homes.

Some people must have made big money out of that.

But at the same time the county and borough councils did precious little to improve the basic infrastructure ie roads, schools, parking facilities etc. and were not really pressurised to do it by existing residents who wanted the place to stay as some sort of rural idyll.

The result is that today Whalley is still a lovely place surrounded by breathtaking countryside.

Just two weeks ago I walked from the abbey up to Wiswell, out onto the moors and across to Sabden – a trek that takes some beating for beauty.

But it is also a community choked by motor vehicles.

It now needs the sort of radical plan that you’ll find in similar picture postcard villages in the Cotswolds and counties like Dorset.

That means shutting off the central area to cars.

Of course some people, true locals included, won’t like that because it will mean shoppers walking further and new roads which may have to run through the gardens of some residents.

But that’s the price to be paid. What mustn’t happen is that Whalley becomes like those hamlets in Cheshire which have a street of outrageously expensive hairdressers, frock shops and ‘delis’ ringed by exclusive gated estates.

What seems strange is that while there is a significant number of homes for sale in the area developers are still apparently desperate to build.

I suspect these builders know something must be done with public money to improve the infrastructure and thus their investment cannot fail.

Residents must insist their political representatives force would-be developers to contribute significantly to providing the sewerage, road and educational facilities.

Grasping at newts to stop plots being built on seems a piecemeal way of tackling a problem that needs a comprehensive and probably painful solution.