I was astonished to read Nik Taylor’s ‘What a Disgrace’ letter in the Beacon (August 2). I don’t know what Wyesham he visited but it certainly isn’t one I recognise.

The Wyesham I live in is a creative and generous community, and I know of nowhere else that has as many community groups and volunteers.

These include highly successful Guiding Groups, Scouting Groups, a Community Choir, Senior & Craft Groups, a flourishing WI and thriving churches that work hard to involve our community.

We have a great local shop with caring helpful staff, and have recently established the ambitious Wyesham Warren food club set up to help families battling with growing food bills during the cost of living crisis.

Surrounded by the AONB, our residents really care for our environment. We have a community Woodland group that works selflessly, giving up their time and labour to manage the village woods, creating an accessible pleasant wooded wildlife haven popular with us all. We also have many dynamic litter pickers in our midst, including the infamous Wyesham Wombles and the wonderful Mr Wigmore, that keep Wyesham cleaner than any other area I’ve visited in the UK.

We are also lucky enough to have voluntarily maintained floral areas throughout the village helping wildlife when it needs it most – we proudly share our village with a healthy hedgehog community. Wyesham is a clean, kind, friendly place whose residents rallied together during COVID and continue to do so, and I feel very lucky to live here.

A community is more than a random bit of bramble hanging over a path. I’m astounded by Mr Taylor’s drive-by negative assessment of our village and curious as to his motivation to write and say such things.

With regards to Mr Taylor’s complaint about the length of grass in our verges and open spaces, he must surely also be aware of the now widely accepted understanding of the desperate need to provide improved habitat for wildlife, in particular pollinators. The modern management plan to allow more meadow like areas to thrive is commonplace and not just Wyesham, so I am unsure why he raises this as specific to our area.

It also saves some of our council tax money from the former intense grass cutting management regimes. It is admittedly an adjustment to the eye of the perceiver for those of us with several decades of life under our belts, as we grew up thinking all public spaces should be kept tightly mown to within an inch of their lives.

But once that perception is appreciated I believe these new meadow like areas soften the visual landscape and I would not want a return to the Tellytubby land appearance he seems to yearn for.

Cllr Emma Bryn (County Councillor, Wyesham Ward)