Your extensive coverage of the Bridge Centre planning fiasco and its impact on the Chippenham skatepark proposals brings up several awkward questions, which urgently need to be addressed in open public debate.

As the Bridge Centre development was a joint venture between Wiltshire Council and the development company, why has the council’s planning committee approved four commercial developments at the edge of the town, all of which will have damaged the viability of the Bridge Centre site? Why has the council shot itself in the foot? Why was no notice taken of opposition from Chippenham Vision, the Chamber of Commerce and the council’s development partner?

The Bridge Centre and Bath Road site was intended to generate a revival of modern quality retail in the town centre and provide signature buildings at an important entry point. None of that looks likely to be achieved now. Isn’t it time to start looking for – and debating – a newly imaginative scheme?

Is there now a risk that Wiltshire Council will press on with a sub-standard scheme on the Bridge Centre site, just to finance a skatepark, without a proper option appraisal? There is talk of it now becoming a discount store site – surely not what Chippenham needs?

I understood that the original figure for the contribution to a skate facility from the Bridge Centre sale was £70,000. The council has now privately estimated that a skatepark in Monkton Park will cost at least £275,000, and hopes that will come from the Bridge Centre sale. Where did the expectation of that larger sum come from? Isn’t this just wishful thinking?

Why has so much of this discussion been carried on behind closed doors? The selection of the Monkton Park site by a task group was not only a dubious process but also a secret one. Now the group preparing the Monkton Park planning application is also meeting behind closed doors, and refusing to meet Freedom of Information requests or to meet residents.

The Bridge Centre will close in a few weeks. Eleven staff are being made redundant, two redeployed and only one retained as a youth coordinator. The area board is being given a small annual sum to run a local youth service, largely based on hoped-for volunteers. With so many youth services lost, is a skatepark really the top priority?

This reminds us that no business case has been made for an outdoor skate facility. No attempt has been made to assess the number and gender of young people in Chippenham who will use a skatepark. No public assessment of the capital and running costs has ever been made.

Even if the priority for a skate facility can be established, in public, then the costs of putting it in different locations must be included in site selection. From the beginning of this long process the cost question has always been ignored, especially by those who are determined to put it in Monkton Park whatever the cost – and whatever the local community thinks. There can be no doubt that the extensive construction and mitigation requirements there make Monkton Park by far the most expensive of the several possible sites. It is an opportunity for our local leadership to take a radically fresh approach. Let’s imagine a community with confidence in its civic leaders and the decisions they take – and try to make it happen. A big ask, but we can if we want to.

Chris Caswill, Independent Wiltshire councillor, Chippenham Monkton ward.