I am grateful to councillor Tom Cunningham (Letters, December 17) for taking the trouble to respond to my letter which highlighted the differences in the amount of money to be spent improving Witham and Halstead town centres compared to the millions allocated to Braintree.

I am delighted to note his comment “we are working for the good of the whole district”. Why then are there to be significant lower sums of money spent in Witham and Halstead?

If a strategic investment in Manor Street will bring social and economic benefit to Braintree, it is highly likely that improvements to the town centres of Witham and Halstead will bring similar benefit to the people of these towns.

It is even more encouraging to hear that BDC is working on a plan for further improvements to Witham. Witham only has a sports centre because BDC demolished the old one in order to sell the site to another supermarket and for a block of flats, neither of which are priorities.

Had the district council taken the trouble to produce a planning brief for the site it could have accommodated a supermarket, an indoor children’s play area, and one or two family eateries as well as 30 apartments on the upper floors. A well designed project would have enhanced the entrance to the conservation area.

For Witham to hold its own with Braintree, may I suggest the excellent report produced by G.V.A. Grimley Limited be reinstated. The taxpayers of Witham contributed to this report, which was promptly assigned to the waste bin.

Witham currently exists to provide a traffic crossroads for Braintree, Maldon, Colchester and Chelmsford. This is quite unreasonable. With a a little effort it is a simple matter to modify the Town Centre Plan to allow the traffic to flow through the town at peak periods with pedestrians only in the daytime, allowing Witham to enjoy the same traffic free environment as Braintree.

Now that retail shopping is in decline, the town centre could be enhanced to meet the social and amenity needs of the entire population.

While the Conservative Party is in control of all three authorities, it should be a relatively simple matter to bring these improvements to all three towns.

Paul M Ryland

Member, Witham Town Council