Tavistock Town Council would like to respond to the comments made about a particular business in the letter to the editor entitled ‘Visions of a ghost town’. Management of council properties is carried out with the advice of independent professionals who specialise in commercial property management in accordance with normal commercial practices. We work very hard to communicate with our tenants to resolve any issues that may occur. However, despite our best efforts unfortunately in exceptional circumstances we sometimes have no choice but to legally recover premises.

Our services to the community and the care of the historic properties owned by the council are funded by the precept and the rents we receive from our commercial and residential tenants. The council is committed to ensuring that all the residents of our town are treated fairly. As a public body, we seek to avoid subsidising the activities of commercial tenants with public money, for example, if the agreed rent is not paid. Finally, Tavistock Town Council wishes to make clear, following recent social media coverage, that it wholly condemns and will not tolerate personal attacks on its officers who are carrying out their lawful duties.

I would imagine we would all agree how fortunate we are to have Tavistock as our local town, it’s Devon’s only World Heritage Town, with its historic beauty set in imposing landscape, this should make us all feel it is indestructible, with generations of people who have walked the pavements and lived and conducted commerce in the memorable buildings that make up the fabric of our daily lives. All of this doesn’t come about by chance, it is down to the dedication of those who strive to earn a living and make Tavistock a go to place, somewhere people wish to set up business and others wish to visit and shop and spend time.

All over our nation, country towns are suffering, mainly because of the internet, out of town shopping centres and costly restrictive parking, just to name a few of the issues, driving the footfall away from our small shops and businesses. Tavistock has been fortunate with so much going for it, there are some people still visiting and spending money, but for how much longer? Anyone reading local media and walking the streets should be alarmed about the growing number of empty shops adorning our high streets, so what are our town council with its huge portfolio of properties and BID doing about this?

When obviously poor decisions are followed by more equally poor decisions, one might conclude that there is some hidden agenda that we are not seeing, or is this just poor decision-making, or an ego thing?

It was not long ago your paper highlighted the restrictive practice of removing the rights of the public to use some public seating, instead renting them out to favoured businesses, with new and rebranded benches, just as though they were never public in the first place.

Anyone passing what used to be Valenti’s Ice Cream Parlour can see another business driven from the town. I must admit I thought at the time of the benches fiasco that the writing was on the wall for Valenti’s as clearly their face didn’t fit, I don’t need to go into detail about how this came about as anyone can read the full story on local Facebook pages, but what can we draw from all this? Is anyone who dares question Tavistock’s elite to be punished as an example for others to comply?

Do the decision makers have the faintest idea what they are doing, by their restrictive attitude they are driving businesses away, and as more and more shops close, for whatever reason, it has a devastating knock-on effect on those who continue to trade? As I have said before, as a former shop owner, I know the worth of the people who invest their lives in small businesses and we should all be trying to help them survive into the future, because if the high rents and rates and poor decisions continue, more will shut up shop. Without them our beloved Tavistock will just wither and die and become just another ghost town.

Michael Fife Cook,

Mary Tavy