Chatting in the street recently with Councillor Craig Turton, I lamented Brighton and Hove City Council's having spent £95,000 on a "legibility study" when, jointly, the Department for Transport and the Department for Communities and local government had been busily producing a "manual for streets" which does the same job, but better.

We talked streets and clucked nostalgically about 100-year-old pictures of the Old Steine before buses and cars took it over. I waxed lyrical about removing all the traffic both sides of St Peter's Church in Brighton saying that so long as St Peter's remained trapped within a traffic "moat", it had no future.

He agreed and told me of plans being discussed with current environment committee chair, Coun Gill Mitchell, to do just this.

Seeing part of our discussion on the front page (The Argus, April 16) is, potentially, a cause for celebration.

Surrounding the Pavilion with extended green space, front and back, would create a unique and impressive park.

But I would like this idea to be taken much further. This creation, in effect, of a central Brighton park, must include The Level. As Coun Turton reminded me, that whole area is coursing with underground rivers which could help create fabulous garden conditions.

Meanwhile actor Brian Capron pleads for the future of Holy Trinity Church in Blatchington Road, Hove.

The reason this church is such a landmark is that it is set back from the road behind its generous curtilage of flint walls, trees and grassed garden area. The area is allowed to breathe both physically and psychologically.

None of the other churches nearby has such presence because they are built right up to pavement edges.

The Church of England is not proposing to dispose of this land, but rather move it to one of its housing association connections.

They intend to totally demolish the church and then to build right up to the pavement's edge, and there is no council policy or planning law to stop this happening. All very grimly functional, in a short-sighted way.

Developers must be prevented from building right up to the pavement's edge. In Hove, this need is now urgent.

  • Valerie Paynter, saveHOVE, POBox 521, Hove