Park strife

WHEN is a public park not a public park? When members of the public try to protect it.

My local council wants to build a £90 million theatre on the beautiful Calverley Grounds, despite the fact the town cinema site nearby has been derelict for more than a decade and would be ideal for this project.

The council is deaf to all pleas. Objectors in droves have contacted the Department of Housing, Communities & Local Government, spurred on by an online petition.

At the May local elections, a new political party gained a seat on the council on the basis of the strength of feeling this issue has generated.

But we have been told we are objectors of a very low calibre within the system because we are not owners or lessees of the park. Our public spaces need protection from the crooked logic of the powers that be. MARY NOLZE, Tunbridge Wells, Kent. JUST like the green lungs of parks, the community lungs of libraries, community centres and day- care centres are under threat from councils wishing to flog off these essential assets to developers.

Many were donated to the people of a town or city by philanthropists and charities. They were not given to the council to become its own family silver to rob at will.

There have been repeated threats to Hove Library, donated to the town’s people by Andrew Carnegie in 1908 and built on donated land. Yet it remains popular, cherished and a lifeline to many.

We now have loneliness and suicide government ministers as mental health issues are going through the roof, but no one is making the connection that vulnerable and socially isolated people have fewer community resources to turn to.

LAURA KING, Hove, E. Sussex.