With reference to the letter last week from Peter Slatter, and the successful amendment by town councillor Peter Hutton to Chippenham Town Council on January 15 to reallocate the £40,000 funding from the children’s splash pad in John Coles Park, we feel this decision was unsupportable.

Our town council constitution ensures that we collect taxes from our residents, for the benefit of our residents.

When our resources committee decided to support the 10.2 per cent tax increase (27p per week) we knew exactly what we were voting for and we knew that the splash pad was one of the new projects.

Does this give us the right to now remove the children’s splash pad funding that our amenities committee supported and that the council issued a press release on, in favour of the transfer of that money into a reserve fund for vague projects, not proposed at any meeting and not mentioned by a single councillor?

Nobody knows what this money will now be used for, but this transfer of the £40,000 into a fund will not reduce our proposed tax increase by one penny.

In this time of austerity it is more important than ever that we try to make sure that cuts do not impact adversely on our children, and that we support projects that benefit them.

Chippenham has 2,800 primary school children, plus others up to 12 years, who do not have a vote, but whose parents, and grandparents, have and deserve to be considered.

Like many recent national decisions this cut will have more impact on the poor in our community who have no money to entertain their kids.

Also, Monkton Park residents may, as before, mount a legal challenge to the skate park application. If this is successful, our children could end up with no skate park and no splash pad.

We are determined to find funding to assist with the project, possibly external, and hope that the amenities and resources committees will support the project later this year.

Bill Douglas, Melody Thompson & Bret Palmer, Chippenham town councillors.