Letter: Council should look at how other towns solve problem

The reason given is because of a lack of car parking space in the area but this has been a problem for many years which the council has never addressed, and it would doubtless also be used as an excuse for any further development around this site.

Why does the council not look at how other towns have solved such a problem in similar residential areas?

Also between the Dana and the Buttermarket/Royal Mail site there is an under-utilised two acre car park barely changed since the railway infrastructure was removed and, as a correspondent to this column has recently written, this could quite easily provide parking on two or three levels.

One wonders if any members of the council have visited The Osborne Group's (the owners of the Dana) previous development at the old Oxford Gaol (The Oxford Castle Project) where, in the city of dreaming spires, it is widely acknowledged that the townscape has actually been improved by the transformation into a hotel.

Apart from the renovations to the Music Hall/Museum in Shrewsbury, has any architecture actually improved the townscape in recent years?

Certainly not alongside the river upstream and downstream of the Welsh Bridge. And yet when a company with proven credentials for sympathetic development attempts to restore a semi-industrial building, it is refused on grounds of lack of parking – why was the Premier Inn not refused on similar grounds?

The role of a council is surely not only to lead (preferably not from the back) but also to provide advice and constructive criticism. In this case all the criticism has been negative. For example, the suggestion of a one-way system around the Dana was described by one councillor as "appalling" but a one-way street alongside the Dana has been in place for many years. Are we going to see some positive, dynamic solutions to this area of town with the two sides working together or are we going to see another virtual folly akin to the Flaxmill, the scaffolded monstrosity which the council has inflicted on the residents of north Shrewsbury for far too many years and which long ago became regarded with the derision it deserves whenever its name is mentioned. Symptomatic of the council really.

Peter Aspin, Wem