I am not surprised Devon County Council has gone back on its promise to acquire some of the Rolle College site for community and educational purposes.

I am not surprised Devon County Council has gone back on its promise to acquire some of the Rolle College site for community and educational purposes. It was the change of political control that made me uneasy.

There was a great public fanfare and celebrations, headed by no less an eminent person than Mr Hugo Swire MP, when it seemed that the deal had been done.

All of our public representatives had backed this to the hilt and now the new Conservative administration has betrayed us.

The Tories were elected on a manifesto of spending as little as possible of taxpayers' money and now we must reap the whirlwind of their policies, much, as I would suppose, to the discomfort of our MP. No doubt the Tories will blame it all on the government!

The new county council leader has stated the whole project would be a white elephant and could never be economically viable. So, by this reasoning, what about The Strand project? If there is �3 million in the budget, could we suspend these improvements and use the money to purchase land at Rolle College?

The proposed development of The Strand would be very pleasant, but that is a luxury and we are no longer living in an age of luxury.

I feel it would be much better to invest in a project that would produce jobs and a very useful community facility. Obviously, this would be considered extravagant in some politicians' eyes.

If there was sufficient goodwill in our local government, and we all felt this is a once in a lifetime opportunity, the town council and East Devon Devon District might consider raising a mortgage and even think about private funding, particularly from whoever is going to develop the whole site.

Some might think this excessive, but when it comes to imaginative ideas about important projects, you have to start thinking outside of the box.

East Devon has stated that its top priority is social housing and here is a site that could accommodate all of its needs. It has been granted money for this purpose and, should it acquire the site with those funds, it could dictate what could also be developed there.

Exmouth loses out on many exciting projects through lack of funding and often through a depressing loss of enthusiasm. There is a chance that, just for once, we could turn around some of our innate pessimism.

Brian Toye,

241 Exeter Road, Exmouth.