SIR — Your editorial comment (Chronicle, March 30) ‘A Sad Day For Open government’, says it all.

Our current council lacks openness, and members of all parties are included in this.

They have showed that they care little about the people of Winchester and are now thoroughly discredited.

First of all they tried to misrepresent the results of the public consultation, they ignored the strength of feeling of local people, demonstrated by the number who marched through the city, and they have dismissed residents’ points of view, evidenced by the many letters that have been published in your newspaper.

As a result, they produced a ‘fudged’ Local Development Framework (LDF) Preferred Option.

Then they arranged for the council meeting on April 22 — in which there was certain to be a lot of public interest — to have an agenda so extensive, that the main item of public concern (Winchester Town LDF) was not discussed until very late, when all but a very dedicated few of the public would have become so tired and numb with boredom and had gone home.

Then they made sure that nobody would know which way councillors had voted for any motions or amendments by opposing a record being taken of votes.

Then the minutes of the meeting were published, showing so little detail of either the voting or the discussions that had taken place, that one wonders if there is something that they are trying to conceal. If there isn’t, then may we please have a true and complete set of minutes on your website, Winchester City Council?

As part of the Preferred Option, the Cabinet have dreamed up this totally risible idea of a ‘knowledge park’ for brownfield Bushfield Camp.

If such a scheme was feasible it would be the wrong place for it anyway.

If it were what we all suspect it will be, ie., an industrial estate, it would not create many jobs for Winchester; it would merely mean more workers travelling in from Chandler’s Ford, Eastleigh and Bishopstoke.

That is, assuming that these people have not taken the lion’s share of affordable houses at Barton Farm, which would then increase through-town traffic.

Geoff Bruty, Manningford Close, Winchester.