RE: Café cost a lot Higginson Park, Marlow I can understand how, and why, having leased the building from the council, that the owner of The Café In The Park should regard the building to be unfit for purpose. (MFP 14 February). The council continues to have much to answer for, as it has throughout the long history of this building.

To understand the basis of the complaint against the council, one has to go back to the Planning Officer’s report to the Planning Committee of December 2006. The report describes the application as “The demolition of existing public conveniences and café and erection of new toilet block and café building.” That is a grotesque, and disingenuous, misuse of the English language. The building which the new “café” has replaced was a small kiosk, whilst the new “café”, which has been built since at great expense, is nothing more than a kiosk with an attached, open to air, shelter.

The report advised the Planning Committee that the café’s seating area was to be “covered and unheated.” It was to “feature sliding glass walls, which could be opened in good weather and closed to keep out the wind and rain”. and asserted that “In this way the use of the café can be extended at either end of the summer. “ The elevations fail to show that the space between the roof and the glazed folding screen panels was an open to air void. Neither the drawings, nor the text, indicate that there were air gaps between the panels. This draughty open to air shelter, was designed to be used for only a limited extended summer season, and not for the entire year. No wonder it proved to be economically unviable. This really does beg the question “did the councillors at any stage fully understand what they were approving?”

The screens have never ever been folded back, and the air gaps between the panels have been filled in. Electric unit heaters have been used to give users some comfort. This un-insulated building contravenes Building Regulations and, as such, it currently makes a mockery of the council’s claim to provide a building, which exhibits the best sustainable design principles. The present planning application to convert the shelter into a heated building fails to explain how it plans to comply with the Building Regulations. That will not be easy, but it will be costly, and it may require adjustments to the building’s appearance.

The council’s spokesperson tries to reassure us by saying that the work will be at the new leaseholder’s expense. Unfortunately, she forgets that we know this building has already cost £600,000, and she expects us to believe that there will be no adjustment of the rent in order to be offset against the cost of the new work.

With this building and The Eden Centre on its cv., what confidence can local tax payers place in the council when it undertakes its planned re-routing of the A40, or the major projects of The Handy Cross Hub and The Daws Hill USAF Base? Readers will have to answer that one. — J.D. Burnham Chartered Architect, Marlow