National Heritage are investing in retaining the splendor of the Victorian rose garden in the southernmost corner of Preston Park.

It is easy to forget it is just a few yards from the main route into Brighton and the view across the rose garden to Preston Place with its foliage covering changing colours with the seasons provides a unique and unusually tranquil setting unusual in the centre of a city.

Sadly, a part of this tranquil view is to be demolished. Berkeley Homes Southern Ltd, submitted a plan for a five-storey block of flats on the site where Preston Place now stands.

After initial refusal and an appeal that was rejected, a second appeal has now been successful.

I would have thought there was a strong environmental reason for retaining the building. A five-storey block overlooking the garden cannot be an improvement.

There has been opposition to the development from neighbours. Yet it is not just neighbours who sit on the park benches enjoying the environment. I'm sure a lot of people like myself who feel the same way in a wider area of Brighton would have objected if they had been aware.

It is not adequate only to inform neighbours in some development cases. I only discovered this application while researching the 15-storey development planned for the Endeavour site.

Developers seem to be chipping away at our environment and there does not seem to be a geographical plan/database to make it easier to see what is going on.

This makes it easier for developers in many situations to get what they want and more difficult for the individual to find out easily what is going on.

If we cannot save Preston Place, what can we save? In the end the developers seem to do what they want. Will Brighton be Brighton any more? Will it feel like Brighton?

The tranquility will have gone, the enjoyment, lost but the planning committee marches on.

Is this the beginning of the end? Maybe the only answer is for a body such as English Heritage to buy Preston Place so we can continue to enjoy the setting.

I will keep a photograph for my children to see, even if they will not be able to enjoy what we were fortunate to enjoy before developers had their way.

-Ray Amis, Brighton