Robert Gould, leader of West Dorset District Council (WDDC) says in his reply to my recent letter that the Charles Street development is not ‘wholly dependant on the (new WDDC) offices’.

So I presume this Dorchester development could go ahead without WDDC spending £10.7million of our money for which they have no mandate from the council taxpayers of West Dorset.

Why then did Mark Newton, leading the Simons team say in the last edition of the Chamber of Commerce newsletter: ‘The council’s decision (to move to Charles Street) has resurrected this scheme’.

If the scheme was a non-starter without the WDDC offices, then I wonder how impartial any decision to relocate might have been given the council’s determination to see the site developed.

It is difficult to believe that the Charles Street site was the only viable option for WDDC. What was wrong with the Poundbury or Brewery Square options?

That Dorchester has a bright future is clear from the continued progress with Poundbury (now offering over 1,200 new jobs) and the recent commencement of Phase II of Brewery Square. The town was recently voted the most likely place for a new business to succeed.

That the future of Dorchester will rely in part on it making more of its history and literary associations is very clear.

This potential will be more readily realised if the provision is made now for visitors.

A large office building, empty after 6pm and occupying a prime site within the line of the Roman walls will add neither vibrancy nor anything for the visitor.

We hear a lot of rhetoric about the need to change our travelling habits – how we could be using public transport instead of the private car.

When one has to stand in an inadequate bus shelter on Trinity Street on a cold wet February evening waiting for a bus, where is the incentive to change our habits?

Perhaps a bus station on the Charles Street site would meet as many of our current and future needs as would further retail outlets.

The proposed offices, and indeed the remainder of the proposed buildings on the Charles Street site are bland, functional and lacking any reference to the history of the site on which they might be built.

Where is there any reference to the massively impressive Neolithic henge monument that dominated the site 4,500 years ago – where are the echoes of the Roman ‘civitas’ of Durnovaria?

I believe the county town of Dorset deserves a great deal more than it is currently being offered on this most important site.

I see no hint of vision or imagination in the plans.

Alistair Chisholm, Dorchester