How will occasional street markets, irrespective of their novelty, regularly entice sufficient numbers of punters to Braintree so as to justify the use of public funds in the latest multi-million pound proposal to revamp the town centre (Times, May 10)?

But at least there seems to be a belated acknowledgement that shoppers need to otherwise be drawn to a town centre devoid of well-known upmarket stores and in an age where internet shopping will soon largely take the place of traditional purchasing.

The idea a large upmarket hotel chain is contemplating investing in this scheme stretches the imagination.

Unless the hotel chain has a virtual guarantee of sufficient regular occupancy why would they bother?

Where would those hotel guests come from?

Street markets? Come on. Is there something the council is not telling us?

A few weeks back we saw a show at the Cliffs Pavilion in Southend.

All restaurants around the theatre were fully booked.

Car parks were full. I’m sure local hotels did good business.

If the theatre had been closer to the town centre, no doubt many of the people attending would have shopped there.

Some of them probably did so anyway.

Such shows regularly attract large numbers of out-of-town punters who provide a substantial cash injection into the local economy.

I apologise for repeating previous comments to the Times, but without a similar permanent attraction in any scheme guaranteeing that large numbers of paying customers will be enticed into our locality, I suspect the latest proposed revamp of Braintree town centre might be considered by many residents and traders to be a waste of scarce public resources.

By Rob Green of Hazel Grove, Braintree