I AM a bit surprised at the rather hysterical response to my letter about Bromsgrove town centre from Councillor Mark Bullivant (January 21).

I think it’s a case of he doth protest too much.

He denies that Bromsgrove District Council delayed making a decision about free evening parking, but then goes on to admit that the council has been intending to introduce free evening parking since 2008.

Seems to me that seven years is one of hell of a long time to make what surely isa relatively straightforward decision.

Cllr Bullivant then arrogantly claims that the Bromsgrove Labour Group and I don’t understand finance. I am not sure that given the lamentable record of his Tory-led council he should be accusing others of not understanding finance, given the amount of money that they have squandered on the failed town centre redevelopment plans, money wasted on failed IT systems, and the millions of pounds it is costing to make the unnecessarymove from the current fit for purpose council building to the much smaller Parkside building.

I did mention some of these issues in my original letter (January 7) but for some reason Cllr Bullivant has conveniently failed to defend those decisions in his letter.

Cllr Bullivant doesn’t seem to understand the principles of local democracy.

Surely it is the role of the official opposition and local citizens to hold the elected council to account for any decisions they make.

He has claimed that my letter was politically motivated, despite the fact that I did not make any reference of my links to the Labour Party in my letter?

In the interests of accountability maybe Cllr Bullivant would like to inform the local citizens what was the outcome of their review into free evening parking. Will the provision of free evening parking really result in the loss of hundreds of thousands of pounds in revenue as he claims? I personally don’t think the revenue shortfallwill be anything near that figure.

Rather than accuse the local Labour group of trying to make political capital out of challenging the council’s prevarication over re-introducing free evening parking, just months before the local council elections, he might reflect on whether he thinks the local residents of Bromsgrove are not clever enough to see through this obvious election bribe.

Bernard McEldowney Lickey End Bromsgrove