Dear Editor,

Vivid whose corporate slogan is bright futures have finalised their plans for the Winklebury regeneration/land grab; Vivid still plan to destroy a much loved and used local park, a real community hub. Vivid highlight they are opening a green space at Fort Hill but by destroying an existing park they reduce the urban green environment, Vivid ignores the massive damage to the environment and Basingstoke’s green heritage, urban greenspace should be treasured for future generations.

Vivid plan to replace the flats at the centre with loads more flats, the development will loom over an already densely built up area. Building blocks of flats seems to be Vivid’s generic answer to development as its just had planning permission refused at the Chapel Hill site for another massive flats development.

Vivid has included a sad few green ideas in its plan - car charging ports and cycle parking. Again all this is based on a single misleading public consultation which was attended by less than three per cent of the community and received 75 feedbacks not all positive.

Vivid controlled the whole consultation and it was designed to censor and mislead the community via misinformation about the park destruction, lack of participation and ignoring existing action plans, lack of any real green initiatives and offered a poor mainly flats based indeed plan.What is very disturbing is Basingstoke and Deane Borough Council’s (BDBC) relationship with Vivid and that BDBC are happy to destroy a community park if other space is usable. It begs the question in times of climate crisis should not all green space be protected instead of being destroyed by Vivid’s corporate aspirations instead of bright futures its more blighted futures.

Pat Horan

Basingstoke