YET again we see members of the council’s cabinet being led up the garden path by its bungling officers.

Following on from the best summer since 1976 and a £200k investment into Twenty One, the council’s new seafront cafe, it has been forced to close down.

Councillor Salter brands this a success?

The building having been empty for 13 years prior to this failed venture, at a huge cost to the tax payer - most sane readers would see this as a complete and utter disaster.

Then we have the old favourite council myth, ‘parking spaces in Southend are only full a few times a year’. The council’s own parking data shows that car parks in the south of the town were full on 64 days of the year surveyed, the equivalent of every weekend between April and November.

Councillors, this really is complacent, ‘dinosaur’ politics that nobody in Southend believes any more. With local elections in less than a year, are you more interested in protecting the consistent failings of officers, or doing the best for residents and businesses in Southend?

Paul Thompson