Cash should go to charity

into a business in order to pay for residents’ services. “We aim to be self-sufficient by the 2018-19 financial year,” he said at the time, adding that he hoped these investments would provide the rents and business rates to offset the impact of cuts in government funding.

Fast forward two years and the folly of this strategy has become all too evident, brought into sharp relief by the coronavirus crisis.

The current £4 million shortfall in the council’s finances looks set to grow as the UK economy goes into freefall.

The number of empty commercial units across the district is mushrooming with the cinema complex continuing to struggle for tenants a year-and-a-half after being built.

The Connect 38 and the Ashford College property schemes were also exceptionally bad deals for taxpayers.

The Vicarage Lane car park development, the multistorey car park, the Swanton House refurbishment and the Bingo Hall scheme all join this game of Russian roulette at the taxpayers’ expense. And against this backdrop, the cheap government loans that financed all this property speculation in the first place are getting more expensive.

The council is now presiding over a string of empty properties, huge debt and a substantial budget deficit. Even if we forgive this economic incompetence, perhaps the true extent of how far this council has veered from its intended purpose of serving its residents is best illustrated in its cynical, uncompromising and profit-based plans for the ‘Ashford Shard’. Unbelievably the council’s own property company, A Better Choice for Property Ltd, is building the ‘Ashford Shard’ with NO affordable housing whatsoever.

This comes despite the fact that a council assessment suggests all future housing projects in the borough

Will Ashford Borough Council be throwing good money after bad for the sake of continuity? [£6k sign unveiled as riverside park given new name, Kentish Express, June 11].

There is an existing sign 25 metres away from the new and unnecessary one telling ‘The Tale of Two Rivers’, and clearly headed ‘NORTH PARK’.

The money would have been better spent supporting local charities.

L D Goddard

More letters on pages 52-53