Over recent days we have seen a debate on the future of Southend High Street.

However, the main problem has not been addressed – the council’s policy of encouraging out-of-town sites for new stores and Southend’s ever-increasing parking charges, coupled with continuing attacks on customers who try to park by the growing army of enforcing wardens, now with sneaky mobile patrol cars filming everywhere.

The town’s parking charges are the most expensive in this part of Essex and future plans show the closing of town centre car parks.

Meanwhile, more retail stores are set to open at the airport site, Fossetts Farm and Roots Hall, which will be the final nail in the coffin for our High Street businesses.

This is the reason town centre stores will go. Not, as has been suggested, because of single mums, benefit claimants and drug addicts. Southend’s anti-motorist policy will cause the end of the town centre as we know it.

K White
Avenue Road
Westcliff

...A great deal of publicity has been given to Anna Waite pointing the finger of blame for the rundown state of the town centre and poor quality of the shops at single mothers, drug users and benefit claimants.

Undoubtedly these sectors of our community exist, but why such front page news for someone who is certainly not a “senior politician” as the Echo called her, nor even a councillor since she lost her seat.

But she is a Tory and local elections are coming up again, so maybe she wants to put the blame on single mothers in the same way as David Cameron blamed “the parents” after the summer riots, ignoring the possibility that Government policies and the actions of the financial institutions could have had anything to do with the situation.

So now we have Anna Waite ignoring both the effects of Government and local council policies on the state of the town.

Southend is known to be a poor employment area.

That’s due to lack of jobs, not the people.

Whose policies caused the demise in the town centre of York Road Market and Warrior Square swimming pool? Why the long term eyesores of derelict office blocks in Victoria Avenue? A prime site for the sort of redevelopment Anna Waite would like, but which has never happened.

Empty and boarded up shopping units and cheap retail shops scatter the town, not just in the centre.

These may not be indicators of a thriving town, but this is not the fault of those who Anna Waite would blame.

The list goes on, but maybe that’s enough because at the end of the day we all know it doesn’t make sense.

Mrs J M Peto
Beaufort Street
Southend

...It is surprising that suddenly the former leader of Southend Council has come back into the picture of a town centre that has deteriorated so badly over several years.

She should consider the main problems such as the hounding of the motorist looking for somewhere to park, better selection of shops in the High Street such as a butcher, greengrocer and even a fishmonger.

This would entice the spending shopper back into the town centre.

Thought could even be given for the York Road Market replacement to go into the Warrior Square white elephant site and it should be remembered that all these young mothers pushing their baby buggies in the so-called shopping centre are helping the remaining shops to survive in business.

Chas Cheesman
The Grove
Southend