SINCE my arrival in the Devizes area 16 years ago, two extremely valuable health authority sites, at St James's and Roundway, have been sold off.

A lot of money was made from those sales yet we have seen little evidence of use of any of the money for our benefit. In fact the only obvious purchase was that ghastly stranded ocean liner of an office block which they now intend to sell.

Despite the raising of these funds for the good of various successive health authorities, we are now told by Mr Golledge, the acting chief executive of the primary care trust, that we will have to pay again by selling our last remaining hospital site in order to raise money to build a new one and that any money raised by selling Southgate House will not be available to us.

If we fail to raise enough and they can't find a suitable private finance partner, no doubt we'll lose that money too and it will be ploughed in to pay for someone else's hospital.

I wonder where Mr Golledge lives? I doubt if he would feel quite so sanguine if he faced a 25-mile drive, no parking when he got there and half a day off work just to get an X-ray if he fell out of his ivory tower.

L HAWES

Worton