I ENTIRLEY endorse the position taken by Councillor Grant to the Full Council meeting on 17 July as outlined in his letter (SA July 16), on the outsourcing of golf courses in Highworth and Broome Manor to a private contractor.

Wroughton Parish Council was the first elected and representative public body to question the wisdom of transferring leisure facilities to private control on 99 year (leading to 999 year) leases way back in December 2013.

The replies we received from Councillors Renard and Williams indicated that only by offering this unprecedented length of lease could private bidders be attracted.

This line changed recently as a result of a media campaign and the increased understanding by borough councillors that there had to be guarantees to Swindon residents of continued leisure provision, following the financial shenanigans around the flagship Oasis privatisation.

So, what went to Full Council in its very first debate on this issue was a 25 year lease for six leisure centres, with the preferred bidder being Greenwich Leisure, a not for profit company that was already managing the Oasis through its continuing difficulties.

The golf courses, however, which overall make a healthy surplus, were to be offered to the preferred bidder on 75 year leases (i.e. the same old discredited story).

The Full Council decision, by a narrow majority, to agree the whole package, without acknowledging the mistakes of the past or the dangers of privatisation of municipal facilities with no guarantees as to their future is, nevertheless, a partial victory for those of us who believe that short term profit-making private companies are not the best place to entrust hard won public assets.

It is also an answer to those who asked in your recent correspondence, “what are parish councils for?”. The answer is they are statutory, elected public bodies, the first tier of local government, who have the right and duty on behalf of the community they represent to hold to account the other tiers of government, whether in Swindon or Westminster and this means they are inevitably involved in real ‘politics’ rather than the shallow party politics, to which Chris Barry presumably refers in the Adver (also 16 July).

John F Newman, Wroughton Parish Councillor, Wroughton, Swindon