Faced with the costly challenge of renovating the Crosfield Hall with council money our council leaders are proposing to pull it down and build another hall 400 metres away on the Rapids site (Advertiser, September 29). This will obviously cost more but most of it won’t come out of council coffers because developers and business money will fund the works.

So we get a distant hall that is in the wrong place and more cafés, shops and flats in the town as a sop to the developers.

I think that “friends of Crosfield Hall” should get a second independent opinion to check the narrative that it would be unrealistic to refurbish.

I think the balance of the town layout is OK and Aldi is big enough and I question whether the new development would be considered at all if it was not being pushed by private finance.

Pete Morton,

Church Lane,

Romsey