I DON’T know how well known it is that Dorset County Council is wasting a considerable sum of money in investigating Mr Philip Atlay’s (KWTG) bizarre attempt to register Hanham Ground retrospectively as a town green, so that the Wimborne Waitrose can be pulled down.

Dorset County Council’s roads and rights of way committee met on November 29 last year to consider the issue. Numerous people gave evidence that the walled and gated ground had been private land.

A few supporters of Mr Atlay told of their summer walks across the Hanham Ground, unaware that their submissions were admissions of trespass rather than evidence that it had ever been a town green.

It was suggested courteously to Mr Atlay at the hearing that his claims were spurious and that now was the time for him to bow out of his doomed campaign gracefully. This he refused to do, so Dorset County Council has now been forced to call a three day inquiry, to be held at the Allendale Centre.

No doubt the council will learn what it should always have known: that the land was private, with the public having no rights at all to use it – unlike today, when the landscaped grounds offer welcome respite to all. What a waste of money in these cost-cutting times!

FRANK AHERN, Canford Magna