A history of White Elephants

Your headline ‘A new vision for Warwick’ (Courier last week) filled me with foreboding. Our council has a record for expensive white elephants going back many years. The building that used to house the library and council offices is an early example of how to despoil the view of an ancient town that would have done credit to a 1960s Eastern European bureaucracy.

More recently we have paid to have the square remodelled three times ending up with a drab grey featureless expanse that was eventually rescued by the local traders against fierce opposition from the council followed by the mess they made of the arrangements for buses before they came to their senses with the current much improved although not ideal scheme. Again we paid the price for council folly.

A couple of years ago they came up with a traffic proposal so ludicrous that it resulted in mass public protest; they did learn a lesson here because we now have a scheme that was done without publicity to avoid the probable unfavourable public reaction.

Having done their best to put the town’s traders out of business by allowing the Sainsbury’s out of town development they followed this with an attack on those in St Johns with another Sainsbury’s store, now they claim to be concerned about the town centre. Did it not occur to them that moving many of the council offices out of the town and closing the county court would have a detrimental effect on the traders?

We should face up to the fact that the council is not fit for purpose and it should be restricted to persecuting people who install energy efficient windows that are hardly visually noticeable and verses on pubs that enhance its appearance. These follies also cost us money but nowhere near as much as their grandiose schemes. - Bill Morris, via email.