I’m grateful to councillor Tom Cunningham (Letters, December 17) for taking the difficulty to answer my letter which highlighted the variations within the amount of cash to be spent bettering Witham and Halstead city centres in comparison with the thousands and thousands allotted to Braintree.
I’m delighted to notice his remark “we’re working for the nice of the entire district”. Why then are there to be vital decrease sums of cash spent in Witham and Halstead?
If a strategic funding in Manor Road will carry social and financial profit to Braintree, it’s extremely seemingly that enhancements to the city centres of Witham and Halstead will carry comparable profit to the individuals of those cities.
It’s much more encouraging to listen to that BDC is engaged on a plan for additional enhancements to Witham. Witham solely has a sports activities centre as a result of BDC demolished the outdated one with a purpose to promote the positioning to a different grocery store and for a block of flats, neither of that are priorities.
Had the district council taken the difficulty to supply a planning temporary for the positioning it might have accommodated a grocery store, an indoor kids’s play space, and one or two household eateries in addition to 30 residences on the higher flooring. A properly designed venture would have enhanced the doorway to the conservation space.
For Witham to carry its personal with Braintree, might I counsel the superb report produced by G.V.A. Grimley Restricted be reinstated. The taxpayers of Witham contributed to this report, which was promptly assigned to the waste bin.
Witham presently exists to supply a visitors crossroads for Braintree, Maldon, Colchester and Chelmsford. That is fairly unreasonable. With a just a little effort it’s a easy matter to switch the City Centre Plan to permit the visitors to move via the city at peak durations with pedestrians solely within the daytime, permitting Witham to get pleasure from the identical visitors free setting as Braintree.
Now that retail buying is in decline, the city centre may very well be enhanced to satisfy the social and amenity wants of the whole inhabitants.
Whereas the Conservative Celebration is in charge of all three authorities, it must be a comparatively easy matter to carry these enhancements to all three cities.
Paul M Ryland
Member, Witham City Council
