Public not aware of Square plan (From Bournemouth Echo)

Public not aware of Square plan

10:02am Friday 22nd June 2012 in Letters to the Editor

THERE have been a few blunders in Bournemouth over the years. However, councillors have explained or defended their action in the Daily Echo.

In Wimborne we seldom see a councillor explaining a decision even when it has been already been decided and acted on.

A Square Deal headline in the Daily Echo 16 June, gave details of a scheme of the Square that I and many other residents had no knowledge of.

It was stated that 30 people opposed, 20 agreed and four didn’t know in a public consultation to a plan for Costa Coffee to take over 40 per cent of the area recently created.

The purpose of that area has never been made clear.

What constituted a public consultation? Who called it? How many people in Wimborne were aware of it?

Suddenly there is a suggestion of a new name for the Square. How much more of the unique market town of Wimborne Minster is to be destroyed before the general public is properly informed?

Most people I have spoken to are unhappy with the cosmetic alterations already made.

Fifteen years ago the scheme was called the Town Centre Enhancement Scheme.

One government grant was lost because of all the dithering after another so-called consultation with the public.

Who decided the change to the Square? Surely the trading centre, where shopkeepers need to keep and enhance their business is the High Street.

Causing Wilts and Dorset to take their buses to and from Poole into West Borough, further away from the shopping centre in my opinion is but one ridiculous decision. I look forward to councillors keeping those who elected them informed.

JACK LOVELAND, Parkwood Road, Wimborne