RE: Last week’s criticism of the Tory administration on Wycombe District Council by Lib Dem councillor Trevor Snaith. Cllr Snaith questioned the spending of up to £750,000 funding feasibility studies into a new community stadium.

IN last week’s paper, Councillor Snaith seems a bit confused in his recollection of issues relating to Wycombe.

The money budgeted for a feasibility study into a new Community Stadium is just that: a budget, it does not mean that the work will cost this amount of money and it is not just for a consultation as Cllr Snaith believes. Although I can assure him that there will be a full and open consultation before any specific site is chosen for a stadium.

Can I also remind him that any stadium would be a community stadium in which the council will hold a major stake, and not owned just by the clubs who play there.

When Bassetsbury Manor was recently sold, to a long-established Wycombe school, in line with long-standing policy the proceeds from the sale were not ring-fenced but went to finance projects in line with the council’s priorities.

One of these priorities is the St John’s Arts Centre, which the council has recently bought and will become a major focus for arts and creative business in Wycombe. The council’s policy is to ensure that we reuse assets to the best benefit of the community and this results in closing underused facilities and investing in new and well supported facilities.

An example of this is the re-use of Holywell Mead pool where an under-used facility will be transformed into a new attraction providing facilities that can be used all year round by the whole community.

Another example is our approach to community centres. We did recently conduct an audit into community facilities across the district. This was not done due to pressure of the Liberal Democrats but was part of a planned programme. The deficit this highlighted did not come about because of the Conservatives allowing massive numbers of houses to be built; this was national policy by a Labour Government which did not see supporting infrastructure as important and therefore did not allow local planning authorities to insist on it.

Our approach to helping to remedy this situation is to support community facilities that do exist.

A recent example of this was the grant of £49,500 given to the Totteridge Community Centre to take a derelict social club and refurbish it as a community centre that can be used by the whole community.

This centre, through the financial support of the council and the hard work of local residents now supports activities seven days a week.

To encourage other centres that have fallen on hard times, the council has set up a fund to give grants to enable other halls to keep open. This has benefited clubs in Micklefield and Ryemead.

We are also working to identify sites that can be used as community facilities and recently added the former environment centre to the halls available for community use. As funds become available from developers, we will be looking to invest in more community facilities around the district but the key to a successful community centre is having the community support to use and run it.

As Cllr Snaith was not on the council when the Liberal Democrats version of Eden was proposed, I will excuse his vague recollection of what it offered and why it was abandoned. For his information, it was indeed smaller as it did not include all of the leisure facilities offered by Eden such as the bowling alley or the large M&S store It did not have the river as a focal point, only an artificial waterway of pumped water and in the end it was not viable as the developers had not dealt with the Tesco store and had no solution to incorporate it into the centre. Like many Liberal Democrat visions it was not a practical solution.

Councillor Tony Green, Wycombe District Council.