BLATANTLY unfair. Urgent talks as Dorset’s financial black hole set to have notable serious implications for county (Echo, January 15).

County admits budget crisis left vulnerable youngsters in danger (Echo, January 16th).

Residents constantly question what their taxes are spent on, so with this in mind I quote below excerpts from the Wyke Regis Community Association (WRCA) January 2016 Newsletter “We the WRCA would like to bring you up to date on what we have been doing in fighting the proposal for six residential pitches for Romany Gipsies or Irish Travellers, proposed for the former Army Camp in Mandeville Road, Wyke Regis.

Following the consultation a report on responses was published on 18/3/2013. There were 170 letters of objection, plus a petition with 724 signatures.

We discovered in this report that the Dorset County Council (DCC) would prefer the site to be a 25 pitch traveller transit site for six months over the summer period then return to ‘grazing land’ in the winter. We have since read Councillor Finny’s (DCC) report, and as the only identifiable person associated with the Development Planned Document (DPD) wrote him a letter of complaint. Copies were sent to councillors and to our MPs. Our concerns being that the original consultation had been changed. To date we have received no reply, by this we assume our complaints were accepted.

The report stated that the DPD costs were within budget but following a Freedom of Information request to DCC we discovered the costs of the consultation was £224.625 and that £92,172 remained in the kitty unspent.

All authorities in Dorset make a contribution and both WPBC and WDDC put in £21,250. If we add in the Dorset-wide costs of officer reports and councillors' time, we believe the overall cost will be somewhere in the region of half a million.

The WRCA leave it to readers to make up their minds regarding, not only the expenditure of this proposal but the length of time consumed by departments and councillors in making a decision. This proposal started in 2014 and, to our knowledge, will not be finalised until 2016/17. Is this really good use of our taxes when so many services are being cut to the core?

M D Watts Secretary, Wyke Regis Community Association