MY thanks to Lee Hines [letters page, November 20] for the letter 'No Need for New Council Offices'.

The issue is becoming far greater than perhaps she and our community realises.

The Cemetery Lodge offices are in dire need of an upgrade. The Chapel, a listed building, will need further repairs. The Town Council spent large sums to stabilise one end of the structure and re-roof it, just to retain it as a 'store'.

The original plan was simple; revamp and develop the Chapel buildings, turn them into modern Town Council offices and sell the Lodge to pay for it, relieving Newent rate payers of the burden of maintaining two old, expensive, decrepit buildings.

The appearance of a proposal to build an office on the car park at the rear of the library is a diversion from the original plan and not one I support. The construction of offices on this piece of land will remove the free 'car park' from public use and could leave the Town Council with a £200,000 bill that rate payers will be paying for years to come.

Much will be made of the possibilities of selling both the Chapel and Lodge to pay for this new edifice, while we may well sell the Lodge to a developer, we'll find it extremely difficult to sell the Chapel and how do I know? It's been tried already!

Documents and reports were not made available for members at the meeting on the 11th to study in advance. Figures were not presented for debate and the suggestion that this was already put in place by some was frightening.

Coun Pilkington went as far as to suggest the Lodge should be put on the market as soon as possible. Why? What would we do in the meanwhile if a buyer appeared?

Far from offering a solution, this 'plan' brings up too many unanswered questions; why does the Town Council need to have an office in town? It's not been an issue to date. What happened to the plan to build a community centre complet with town council office in the Lakeside Park? How many offices does the town council need?

Should we be looking to spend large amounts of public money on what may be seen as a vanity project when there are far more important things we struggle to find money for?

Coun Len Lawton

Newent Town Council