Sir – At a recent meeting of the resources overview and scrutiny committee, at which the capital budget was produced for us to scrutinise, I noticed that the budget item for High View redevelopment was blank, meaning there were no plans to spend anything

Sir - At a recent meeting of the resources overview and scrutiny committee, at which the capital budget was produced for us to scrutinise, I noticed that the budget item for High View redevelopment was blank, meaning there were no plans to spend anything on it for next year! I was shocked because this was the budget that had been approved by the cabinet and was coming to us to scrutinise. This meant that the cabinet had once again abandoned an important priority in Hatfield. It's bad enough they have not delivered the Town Centre redevelopment, but now they were minded to not bother doing anything in High View as well?

I brought this up and just received blank looks from the cabinet member for resources, who seemed to be in denial that this was his budget and he should therefore take responsibility for it.

I think there must have been a lot of scrabbling around between cabinet members that night, because when the capital budget reappeared at the full council meeting to vote on the budget guess what, High View redevelopment was back in again. I am very pleased that this strategically important scheme has now been given some priority, but I think the people of Hatfield should know that it is only because we on the Labour side spotted this omission that it has now been given some priority. This is another shameful example which shows the administration just does not care about Hatfield at all.

Cllr Margaret Birleson, leader of the Labour group,

Welwyn Hatfield Council.