I WOULD like to respond to the letter that Paul Bench, development director of Foinavon, wrote to me (Letters, September 27) regarding the old Ushers site.

I know that he has an interest in what is built on the site. But then so do I.

Why can we not have more places of leisure instead of more shops? After all you can only shop till you drop while you have the money to do so.

Isn't it just as important to relax and enjoy yourself? And wouldn't it be nice to take the kids out to somewhere we could all do that together as a family?

The kids of Trowbridge need somewhere to go and that's a fact. It would stop all the boredom and the vandalism in the town if they had something else to do rather than hanging around and getting into trouble.

And it would make the life of some people a lot easier too by not having gangs of bored kids outside their doors.

Paul Bench says that I was only right on one point, that we should be proud of the fact that Trowbridge is the county town of Wiltshire. Well, if that's the fact then why can't the people of the town choose what we need instead of developers telling us what we need! If we want to use these sorts of activities then we have to travel out of town. But why, when we have the land to build our own!

The old Tesco site is still idle. Why has that not been turned into an ice rink for example? We could have bingo and the like on the top floor space.

We need to start putting the town back on the map, a place where people out of town would come for a day or night out. And just think of how proud we all could be.

JOSEY ELKINS,

Sanders Road,

Trowbridge.